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Copyright, 1885, 
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October 1, 1886 


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MARCELLA GRACE 


An Jrisl) Noncl 


By ROSA MUL1IOLLAND 


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MARCELLA GRACE. 


CHAPTER I. 

HER MOTHER WAS A LADY. 

In that part of Dublin known as the Liberties lived an old man 
named Grace with his daughter Marcella. The father, though an 
uneducated son of the people, had seen better days, had once been a 
master- weaver, and had married a lady. But the daughter never 
had seen better days ; her mother, the lady, had been dead before she 
could walk, and all the good times were gone before she was aware 
of their existence. The old man had of late years gradually sunk to 
his original level, and consoled himself with a single loom and his 
pipe; and the daughter, while mending his clothes and striving to 
make him comfortable, had somehow grown into a woman. 

They lived in a quaint old part of the Liberties known as Weav- 
er’s Square, a spot that reminded one of a dilapidated nook of some 
ancient foreign town, for the houses of dark brick were built with 
high-peaked fronts and flat, narrow windows, and had peculiarities 
of their own which marked them as of a different quality from the 
ruder and uglier dwellings that surrounded them. It was a place 
inhabited by poplin weavers ever since the establishment of the trade 
in the neighborhood by Huguenot settlers in the olden time. Tabinet 
weaving, once a flourishing art, is now on the wane and threatening 
to decay. Michael Grace had gone down with the trade, and was 
now dragged lower every day by the increasing infirmities of years. 

The house in which they lived stood at the entrance to the square, 
and was larger than the rest, with some heavy stone-carving about 
the hall door, and massive sills to the windows. The dwelling had 
probably been at one time the country-house of gentlefolks, and had 
got built up to, and walled around, and had found itself caught in 
a net-work of foul streets, long left behind by its old frequenters. 
With the perpetual frown under its windows, and streams of damp 
on its walls, it had a brooding, weeping look which seemed ever to 
deplore its reverse of fortune. In his palmy days Grace had bought 
the old house and furnished it in a manner which he had considered 
splendid ; and here he had brought his wife, who had never seen the 
neighborhood before, who probably had not liked it, and who here 
1 


2 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


had died. Marcella had been born in the house, and there was some- 
thing about its aspect which seemed to harmonize with the charac- 
ter of the girl. In spite of its sad and lonesome air it had also its 
gracious aspect, and held the same relation to the other houses in the 
streets that Marcella occupied among the people, being one of them- 
selves, though standing a little apart, and being a good deal the pride, 
and slightly the envy, of its neighbors. Its glory was a thing of the 
past, like the good-fortune of the Graces, for it had become so dilap- 
idated that it was with difficulty the weaver and his daughter were 
able to make their home in a corner of it. 

Yet, in spite of all difficulties, Marcella, by virtue of some gift in 
her eyes and fingers, contrived to make the dingy place something a 
little different from the ordinary of such homes. Strips of old amber 
tabinet, much faded with frequent cleaning, hung by the window, 
and other such contrivances, gave the room she lived in a character 
of its own. She would go without her breakfast to buy a penny 
bunch of spring flowers to place in the brown pitcher on the corner 
of the dark old loom that caught the sunlight as it fell through the 
window. Her floor was always scrupulously sanded and her fire- 
side bright and swept. Neighbors who came to ask her help or ad- 
vice could not tell what it was that made the old weaver’s room so 
home-like. The walls were as crooked as other folks’ walls, the 
ceiling as dark with age and smoke, and the light as scant, for it was 
not in the handsomer rooms of his house that he harbored in his latter 
days, nor had the Graces preserved any smart pieces of furniture to 
show that they had come down in the world. Housewives of the 
decenter order came and went away again perplexed. There was 
something in old Grace’s room which they could not describe, and 
which they did not see when they went home. 

Even from the outside, Marcella’s window, when she happened to 
stand by it, would strike a stranger who might happen to be peering 
about the ancient street, and might wake in him — if he happened to 
be imaginative and a traveller — a memory of Italy. He had seen a 
richly-tinted face, a dark picturesque head, like the head of a Roman 
girl framed in a queer worm-eaten window-frame based by a sill with 
fantastic carving, and behind it a glow of yellow drapery had shone 
dimly through the shadows and glinted into the light. And if it 
chanced to be sunset hour, when the sunshine would suddenly cover 
one strip of the house, like the unfurling of a long red banner against 
the time-darkened walls, then deep unsuspected hues would come 
out of the weather-stained bricks, enhanced by the intensified shad- 
ows under the sullen brown window-frames, and in the cavernous 
chambers behind the sashes. 

Certainly the Graces’ room would not have been a cheerful one if 
any one else had lived in it, if Marcella had been allowed to go else- 
where to earn her bread, or if the fever had not spared her the last 
time it went its fiery way through the Liberties, burning up human 
life like chaff before flame. The better class of neighbors were 
aware of this, and would have been sorry to see her depart ; for though 
she did stand a little aloof from them, it was only a little. Were 


HER MOTHER WAS A LADY. 


3 


any one sick or in trouble, Marcella forgot her reserve. She was a 
credit to the street when she went out to do her scanty bit of mar- 
keting, for she walked with the step of a lady in her bonnet which 
was no better than their own. And why should she not do so, since 
her mother was a lady? In the girl’s simple superiority there was 
little that could offend even the most envious or ill-conditioned. In 
spite of her unusual beauty she never interfered with the lovers of 
other girls; never had had one herself, and seemed willing to have 
none. Then she was useful to the mothers as a model to be held up 
to the daughters. Sometimes young wives did not like having her 
thrift made a reproach to them by cross husbands; but on the whole 
she was popular. The very old men liked her the best, and the young 
men least of all, the latter feeling awed by her gravity, and by a cer- 
tain involuntary haughtiness in the carriage of her head which made 
them humble and awkward when (as on rare occasions) they hap- 
pened to find themselves in her presence. 

A damp winter afternoon was just closing, the thick yellow day- 
light fading in the street, and dingy lights springing up in the win- 
dows. In the weaver’s room dusk was shifting gradually along the 
walls and through the panes, and, seeing it depart, a small fire began 
to find courage to burn, and darted little javelins of flame into the 
gloom, making the silent loom look like some ungainly ogre who 
was trying vainly to hide himself in the shadows of the corner. 

Marcella put down her sewing and straightened her limbs, which 
were stiffened with the fatigue of sitting still. She had been at work 
since morning and had earned a shilling. She peered out before 
drawing the curtain across the window, looking anxiously for her fa- 
ther coming home. There was poplin on the loom which ought to 
be finished to-morrow. Why had he always forbidden her to learn 
to do his work? She stood before the loom gazing at it with bent 
brows, as at an enemy with whom she was powerless to grapple, 
while she thought of her terrible helplessness as a woman, and the 
urgent need of aid from some quarter, which she felt more and more 
as the days went by, and her father grew less inclined to work. And 
then the door opened and Michael Grace came in and sat down at 
the fire. 

He was a tall old man, with arms that seemed loose at the joints, 
long, rugged features, and an indolent, not ill-humored expression of 
countenance, but with a warning spark smouldering in the corner of 
his eye which might easily be quickened into anger. He looked like 
one who would do a good turn if it cost him no trouble, but who 
would shirk a burden if he could. The world might slip away from 
his large limp hands if the holding it fast were to cost him much ef- 
fort. And it had slipped away from him, taking with it his com- 
fortable house, his workmen, his mastership, and many busy looms. 
But he was old now, and he had his pipe. Could he but live with- 
out toiling, he were content. It was slow getting money out of yon- 
der weary old loom ; but Marcella, the girl there, knew more about 
money than he did. She contrived his cup of tea and his tobacco. 
Could her magic but reach the length of providing for herself and 


4 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


her old father, then, indeed, he would be glad of her and proud of 
her. But no; he never had got her taught a trade. Her mother had 
been a lady; let the world remember that. His daughter had enough 
to do about her own fireside. He needed his little comforts looked 
after. Were* she to go running about after millinering and dress- 
making. what kind of life would her old father have at home? Well, 
well, she had a handsome face. No brighter eyes were to be seen 
about Dublin. He had turned the matter over in his mind. Never 
fear but she would do her work well some day. 

Michael Grace lit his pipe and smoked, and Marcella stood waiting 
at the opposite side of the hearth. Should she dare to light the 
evening lamp? No; her father might be angry, thinking she wanted 
him to work. 

The weaver extended his large feet to the blaze, and smoked with 
great zest. He was dreaming that he lay at ease in a snug arm- 
chair by the side of a fire that was not likely to go out, and that he 
had no other duty than to smoke all day long, with a pleasant odor 
of plentiful food in his atmosphere. Old Michael’s castle in the air 
was a substantial one, and he thought he knew the road to it well. 

“I’m gettin’ old, my girl, an’ I feel myself full of aches and pains. 
Whisht, now, ye needn’t look so scared. It’s only ould age that’s 
come down on me. I’m not goin’ to be makin’ many more gran’ 
gownds for the ladies, an’ that’s all. ” 

Marcella’s face grew pale in the firelight. She had hardly thought 
this day so near at hand. 

“You’ve got cold, father!” she said, briskly. “ Cheer up and let 
me nurse you a while.” 

“No such a thing!” cried the father, angrily. “I tell you I’m 
grown old, an’ I look to have my rest.” 

Marcella sat silent. Many items of trouble were cast up in her 
mind on the moment into a long account — owing to the baker, din- 
ner to-morrow, rent at the end of the week — next week — next month 
— next year. 

“Father,” said she, presently, “why did you not give me a 
trade?” 

“A trade! Puff!” The old man drew away his pipe, and made 
a contemptuous flourish with his hand. “ Your mother was a lady, 
girl. Remember that.” 

Marcella had heard such an answer before. She had spoken on 
the subject many times; maybe once too often, for she was silent 
now. 

“ Ay,” echoed the weaver, “she was a rale lady. No better blood 
ever danced a Pathrick’s dance in the four ould walls of the Cas- 
tle yonder— black as it is wid the age, and big as it is wid the size. 
It was a Pathrick’s night that I seen her the first. 

“My masther had an order on hands of blue tabinet for her Ex- 
cellences the Lady Liftenant. Holiday as it was, I had to stay at 
the finishing of it. I worked very hard to get the evenin’ to my- 
self; but it was far in the night when the parcel was ready. ‘ Well, 
well,’ I said, ‘I’ll just take the bundle in my hands, and go up to 


HER MOTHER WAS A LADY. 


5 


the Castle at the wanst wid it; an’ maybe Molly Sullivan ’ll con- 
trive to get me a sight of the quality at their dancin’.’ Molly was a 
tidy little maid at the Castle, an’ there’s little she wouldn’t ha’ done 
for me at the time. 

“It’s myself was in the right, for Molly found me a peep-hole. 
At first I could see an’ hear nothing, for the whole place was in wan 
uproar of splendiour. The music was fit to make your heart burst 
in two halves wid the delight. Molly said they were dancin’, but I 
only saw the ladies sailin’ up an’ down the room like swans in a 
river, an’ the gentlemen follyin’ them, an’ meetin’ them, an’ bowin’ 
to them. 

“I was hardly drawin’ my breath wid admiration when my eyes 
lit on wan little face; an’ never could they leave it the rest of the 
time. She was shy and frightened lookin’ someways — Molly said 
because it was her first Castle ball. She was as beautiful as a fairy, 
an’ as happy as a queen. I thought she had the purtiest pair of 
eyes that ever were planted in any mortal head. An’ she was 
dressed out all in white, wid a long poplin train; an’ what but 
Michael should set about thinkin’ maybe ’twas his hands that wove 
the very piece! Molly knew all about her: in the regard of her sis- 
ter bein’ the little jewel’s maid. 

‘ ‘ I went home that night grumblin’ to myself because I wasn’t a 
gentleman ; that I couldn’t wear a uniform, nor ruffles, nor Silk stock- 
in’s; for then I might ha’ been leadin’ her about as proud as e’er a 
wan o’ them, an’ bowin’ to her, an’ meetin’ her, an’ follyin’ her through 
the crowd. But in a few days I forgot about it all. Times took a 
good turn wid me, an’ my head was full o’ the lucre o’ the world. 

‘ * Five or six years went by, an’ I had got to be a master-weaver. 
I had taken this ould house, the best in the street, an’ made it look 
tidy, an’ furnished it up handsome. An’ it’s little I thought who I 
was doin’ it for. An’ when it was finished there was somethin’ the 
matter wid me. An’ wan day the truth hit me hard ; an’ I says to 
myself, ‘ Michael Grace,’ says I, ‘ you’re a lonesome man!’ An’ then 
an order came in, an’ I forgot about it again. An’ that same day I 
was walkin’ down the street, an’ who should I light upon but little 
Molly Sullivan. 

“ ‘ Well, well, Misther Grace!’ said she; ‘but it’s you has got up 
in the world since the Pathrick’s night when ye came up to the 
Castle wid the poplin.’ 

“‘It’s thrue for you, Molly,’ said I, ‘an’ I hope things goes 
aiqually as well wid yourself.’ 

“‘I’m not goin’ to complain,’ said Molly; *but it’s badly the 
times has gone wid some since then. Do you remember the little 
lady you fell in love wid at the Pathrick’s ball? Well, she’s down 
now, lower nor you nor me.’ 

“ ‘ What do you mane?’ said I, for well I minded her. 

“ * The father went to ruin that year,’ said Molly, ‘ wid his horses, 
an’ his hounds, an’ his dinners. Hunted himself to death, an’ his 
poor wife wid him. An’ what was the daughter but a child?— an’ 
her friends has dropped off, an’ the world has turned against her. 


6 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


An’ she’s trying to airn her bread, the poor crature, doin’ little bits 
of sewin’ that wouldn’t feed a cat. But it’s in the graveyard she’ll 
be afore long,’ said Molly. 

“That’s what Molly said, an’ it was thrue. Molly was married 
only middlin’ herself. She had a corner to let, an’ the poor little 
lady was livin’ wid her. 1 seen her at the place, by the way I 
should give an order for work, an’ the purty young face was thin 
an’ worn, an’ she had no more pride than a babby. For three long 
years I stood her friend, fast an’ firm, till Molly died, rest her sowl ! 
an’ there wasn’t a crature left to take care of the little lady. I 
don’t know where I got the courage to ask her to marry me. I 
tould her I wasn’t fit to spake to her, I knew ; but I could give her 
a safe home, an’ I could worship the ground she walked. An’ she 
took it quite quiet, an’ was thankful to me till the last day she lived. 
An’ the ould house was beautiful to go into from ever the first day 
she set her foot upon the floor, an’ ill-luck ne’er came near me till 
she left it in her coffin. I made her the purtiest gowns that ever 
seen the loom; but she didn’t like the gay ones, I could see: seemed 
as if they minded her o’ somethin’. An’ she never wanst gave me 
the crooked word. It was ‘Yes, Michael, if ye plase,’ an’ ‘No, 
Michael, if ye plase.’ She got rosy an’ liappy-lookin’ for wan little 
while, after the child was born— that was you, Marcella. Then she 
faded like the snow off the ditch.” 

Old Michael paused, and drew his hand across his eyes. Marcella 
had listened to every word. The tale was not new to her, yet it 
never had grown wearisome. Many a time had her fancy seen that 
pretty girl-lady, her mother, dancing in glee among her peers at 
the great Castle ball. Of Patrick nights, when the carriages were 
rolling to the Castle, she had sat late over her fire and studied the 
brilliant picture. Very dazzling were the lights, very gloomy the 
shades, and Marcella’s thoughtful eyes had marked them all. 

Many a time, too, had she lingered passing the old house before 
entering it. She had peered in at the windows, and had seen the 
gentle creature with her baby in her arms. Up and down she had 
seen her pacing softly, pondering in mild amazement the sadness 
of the changes in her life. So this mother was like a dream or a 
story, but with a difference. In passing away she had left some- 
thing behind her. Her strange little fate had made a mark upon 
her narrow bit of world: an unusual mark, which would be seen 
and recognized. She had left a nature with her daughter which 
was foreign to the class to which that daughter must belong. And 
this Marcella had observed in her own untutored way. 

“ So that bein’ the story of your mother,” said the weaver, “ never 
spake again about learnin’ a thrade. I’ll settle you like a lady in a 
house of your own, an’ Michael will have a seat in the chimney- 
corner.” 

“Father!” cried Marcella, startled out of her dream. 

“Buy yourself a ribbon, and begin to look handsome,” he went 
on, “for I’ve made a fine match for you. And I’ll weave you a 
weddin’-gown that’ll stand alone.” 


HER MOTHER WAS A LADY. 


1 


Marcella sprung forward and stood trembling before him. 

“ Oh no, father, I will not have that!” she cried, hastily. 

The weaver took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at her. 
How handsome she looked, even when she was a bit troublesome, 
like this. It was well she was, or the well-to-do grocer on the quay 
would never have taken a fancy to her, as she stepped out of the 
chapel door on Sundays. 

“Not have what?” he asked, peevishly. “Maybe ye’d like a 
thrade to work at betther nor a husband to airn for ye?” 

‘ ‘ I would, ” said Marcella, eagerly. 

“Ye’re a fool,” shouted the weaver, “and ye’ll go to the poor- 
house! It’s the cursed proud blood of strangers that’s workm’ in 
ye, settin’ ye against the biddin’ of yer father!” 

Michael was angered and disappointed in his daughter. Would 
any other girl in the world not have been thoroughly charmed with 
his plan? But there was always a queer turn in her, wherever she 
came from. Her eyes might be like her mother’s now when they 
had tears in them, but it was not her mother’s humble spirit that had 
looked out of them a minute ago. 

He got up impatiently, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and 
went off to bed in a sulk, leaving a frightened, aching heart and 
the unfinished tabinet behind him. 

Marcella lit the poor but neatly trimmed lamp, and unfolded a 
new piece of sewing. It was still early in the night, and she could, 
perhaps, earn sixpence before the great bell of St. Patrick’s Cathe- 
dral should boom forth, calling the hour of midnight over the city. 
And meantime she could give herself up to her own sad and specu- 
lating thoughts, undisturbed except by the occasional too-familiar 
sounds of quarrelling in the streets, as men and women, turned out 
of the late-closing taverns in the neighborhood, passed under the 
window, on their way to wretched homes. 

Shuddering over the announcement her father had just made, of 
his desire to marry her to some well-to-do man of his own, or not 
much better than his own, class, she assured herself again and again 
that this was a matter in which she had a right to refuse obedience 
to him. Though she was certainly his child, and would always de- 
vote herself lovingly to his service, yet she had, as he had angrily 
complained, blood in her veins which was different from his. The 
instincts of her mother, of whose ladyhood he so proudly boasted, 
were with her, and she felt that they would cling to her as long as 
she lived. She acknowledged to herself now, what through loyalty 
to him she had often tried to deny and ignore, that there was a gulf 
between herself and his friends and associates which time would 
never help her to bridge. It was not that she disliked or despised 
the poor people around her, but they were not of her class, and she 
was not of theirs. She could help them, sympathize with them, 
pity them, respect them as occasion required, but she could not take 
a husband of their kind. 

Dropping her work and covering her face with her hands, she 
gave way to her grief and wept. Having faced the loneliness, the 


8 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


isolation of her position in the world, she perceived the misfortune 
that her birthright of refinement must be to her, the burden of soli- 
tude that it laid upon her. Must she spend her whole life sewing 
alone in a garret, as now, after her father had left her, when she 
should indeed be alone in the world? He must really be ill, must 
feel himself breaking down, or he never would have talked as he 
had talked this evening. Oh, why had he not given her a trade, not 
taught her something by which she could earn for him now, by 
which she should be able to maintain herself after he was gone? 

She thought of the very small amount of education she had re- 
ceived: not sufficient to enable her to be a National School teach- 
er without further study. She could read and write well, better 
than most ladies (though of that she knew nothing), and had read 
and reread the few treasured books which her mother had left be- 
hind her, and which the weaver had always preserved with a sort of 
superstitious reverence. “The Imitation of Christ,” Wordsworth’s 
poems, and a New Testament were the staple of Marcella’s library. 

Though her fingers were naturally clever at putting feminine odds 
and ends together, she had received no teaching to enable her to be 
a dress-maker or milliner. And who was to support her while she 
learned such handicrafts, even if she were free to begin now ? She 
knew nothing of artistic work, such as ladies do, and which she had 
often looked at admiringly in the windows of shops where such 
things are to be sold. 

Her thoughts strayed longingly towards the convent where she 
had received her scanty education at a daily school, to the hospital 
where the bright-faced Sisters of Charity pass their days in tending 
the sick and the dying. Oh, could she be even a lay-sister under 
such a blessed roof ! But how could she hope to be good enough, 
clever enough, strong enough? Now, at all events, she could not 
desert her father. She must endure his anger, she must stitch night 
and day — 

A subdued but persistent sound of urgent knocking here inter- 
rupted the course of her thoughts. She dropped her work and lis- 
tened. It was at the street door. Some one was wanting admit- 
tance to the house. As she sat listening, in absolute wonder, the 
summons was repeated, softly, rapidly, imploringly. 


CHAPTER II. 

NOTHING WRONG. 

Marcella got up from her seat and went down into the mil- 
dewed old hall, and spoke through the key-hole. 

“Who wants to get in so late at night? I cannot open.” 

“ Open for God’s sake!” said a voice. “ ’Tis a matter of life and 
death. ” 

More information as to character is sometimes conveyed in the 


NOTHING WRONG. 


9 


tones of a voice than in the expression of an eye, and Marcella, be- 
lieving instinctively in the owner of the voice, opened the door 
without further hesitation. In an instant it was shut again by a 
pair of strong hands, and a man was standing in the darkness in the 
hall beside her. 

By the very faint ray of lamplight that came through the dusty and 
broken fanlight, she could just see that he was tall and dark, pale 
and weary looking. 

“You have done a good act,” he said; “I am more thankful 
than I can say. Will you go further, and find me a hiding-place 
for a few hours? I trust myself entirely into your hands. But 
first of all, let me assure you before God that I have done nothing 
wrong.” 

“It is a serious thing,” said Marcella, hurriedly, for the urgency 
of his manner pressed her. ‘ ‘ I am a young girl, and my father is 
an old man, and there are only two of us in the house. We are 
very poor, and I think if you were not good we should hardly he 
worth your notice. And if you are good and in trouble — ” 

“I do not boast of much goodness, but I am not a wicked man, 
and I am in a strait. Is there any place in the house where you 
could conceal me? I have reason to fear I have been watched and 
may be searched for here. ” 

“ There is a place,” said Marcella, “ though not a comfortable one. 
Come up-stairs and I will show it to you.” 

She led the way up the worm-eaten stair. Old Michael Grace 
slept heavily, and the light sound of their feet did not wake him. 
Marcella knew that the times were troubled, and that it was a mo- 
ment when a man might be in a strait through his political opinions. 
She therefore asked no more questions, and hoped for the best. At 
all events, once fastened up in the old secret closet behind the panel 
in the unused room, at some distance from that in which she and 
her father lived, the stranger would be safe, and also incapable of 
delivering himself till she should choose to release him with her own 
hands. Even if he were a robber — ” 

She fetched her small lamp, and holding it over her head rejoined 
the stranger on the threshold of the mouldy and deserted room, into 
which she had introduced him. 

A robber ! What a fool she must be to have allowed such an idea 
to cross her mind for an instant, was her thought as she glanced at 
the face on which the meagre lamplight fell. It was the thoughtful 
face of a cultivated gentleman, a countenance of no ordinary cast, 
pale and worn, with a look of noble resolve and manly determination 
on the brow and mouth. 

“ Such a man could do, could think, no wrong,” thought Marcella, 
with enthusiasm, while the piercing gray eyes of the stranger scanned 
her own face and form, wondering much, even in the midst of his 
own anxiety, that so beautiful and intelligent a creature should be 
found harboring in this rotten old shelter in the midst of the pover- 
ty and squalor of the city slums. 

“The closet is here, sir,” she said, putting her hand on the wood 


10 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


that still lined the strong-built walls. “ It was evidently made for 
a hiding-place in the old times, and I think nobody remembers its 
existence but me.” 

For a moment her words and unconsciously graceful action as she 
looked over her shoulder at him suggested the conceit that this was 
no woman who had come to his aid, but the ghost of some long dead 
lady of quality, who had once dwelt in state in the now dilapidated 
mansion, and who had come back to reveal to him the secret of her 
house, pleased that there had occurred yet another opportunity for 
the service of the once much needed hiding-place. 

Marcella threw open a door, formed by the panel, which creaked 
on its rusty hinges, and disclosed a small chamber, long enough for 
a man to lie his full length in, and high enough to allow of his stand- 
ing upright. It smelled of decay and damp, and was as dark as a 
dungeon. 

“It is ventilated through the outer wall,” she said, “ so you can- 
not be smothered. At what time shall I come back to let you out?” 

“About an hour before daylight, if you will be so good.” He 
was going to say something more, when a loud knocking began to 
resound upon the street door which had so lately admitted him. 

Marcella instantly closed the closet and extinguished her light, 
which, as the room was a back one, could not have been yet seen by 
the new applicants for admittance to the house. Then she crept 
away to the little room where she slept, got into bed, and lay still. 
This time she was determined she would not open the door to 
strangers. 

The knocking went on for five or ten minutes, and at last became 
so loud and imperious that Michael Grace was awakened by it. 

The old man sat up in his bed and listened in astonishment. It 
did not seem to him that the house was on fire, and what other rea- 
son could there be for such an assault upon his house after midnight? 
Grumbling, and muttering a few characteristic oaths, he groped out 
of his room and went stumbling down the staircase, and confronted 
the assailant of his knocker (a knocker which was one of the few 
relics of grandeur the old fellow had got to be proud of) with a face 
of thunder. 

At the sight of the police his countenance altered, not for the bet- 
ter, however, and a storm of abuse greeted the stalwart servants of 
the law. 

“You overgrown fools,” he said, “ what brought you to an honest 
man’s dure at such an hour of the night — or mornin’? — bad luck to 
me if I know which of them it is!” 

“ Aisy, Misther Grace, aisy!” said the head-policeman. “It’s not 
you we have to do with. But you see there’s been a bad job done 
to-night — ” 

“Of course there has!” sneered Grace. “Many’s the bad job is 
done ivery night that you’ve got no eyes to see, Misther Ojnadfiaun. 
Why didn’t you take whoever was afther doin’ the job that ye’re 
talkin’ of, an’ not come routin’ a dacent man out of his bed to tell 
him the news that he could wait for till mornin’?” 


NOTHING WRONG. 


11 


“Come, come,” said the policeman; “I tell you I am going to 
search your house. We have reason to suspect that a person con- 
cerned in the affair is in hiding here.” 

“ Dropped down the chimney, I suppose, or into the letter-box,” 
said Grace, talking in a sarcastic tone, and glancing towards the slit 
in the massive door (another source of his pride), where a letter-box 
once had been. “Nothing more likely to happen in the world, Mis- 
ther Peeler, when a dacent man is asleep — ” 

Here the policeman put the master of the house aside, and walked 
noisily up the crazy stair, followed by a volley of imprecations of a 
ludicrous and harmless character from the exasperated Grace. 

“I’ll have ye up before the Lord Liftenant himself, so I will. 
Where’s yer warrant? The law’s agin you — ” 

“Whisht, man,” said the second policeman, good-humoredly. 
“Do you think ye are in England? Don’t ye know you’re livin’ 
under the Coercion Act?” 

“Bedad, so I am,” said Grace, “an’ I forgot it entirely. Well, 
now, Misther Policeman, are you satisfied that nobody is here? 
Nicely you’ve let Misther — what’s his name?— Captain Moonlight — 
I beg his pardon — slip through your fingers!” 

“There’s a room here that we have not opened.” 

“My daughter’s room. Then do you want me to brain you?” 

But at the same moment Marcella appeared at her door. 

“Let them come in, father. You know it is the law.” 

“Beg pardon, miss, but we have to do our duty.” 

In a few seconds the big men of the massive belts and helmets 
were out on the landing again, admitting to each other that they had 

S ot on a wrong scent. The house had been easy enough to search. 

Ixcept in the corner of it occupied by the weaver and his daughter, 
there was no furniture behind which a man could hide. A look 
into the empty rooms, with their decaying ceilings and floors, was 
sufficient; and even the inhabited chambers could not have long 
concealed a cat. With another apology to Marcella, the policemen 
soon turned on their heels and retreated from the place, followed by 
the gibes and jeers of the master of the dilapidated dwelling. 

Marcella stood for a moment irresolute on the threshold of her 
room, as her father came grumbling up the stair again after fasten- 
ing the door. Ought she to tell him what she had done^ relieve her 
mind of the responsibility she had incurred, and place* the fate of 
the concealed stranger in his hands? She felt that she could not do 
it. There was no knowing what view a man so uncertain of hu- 
mor, though with so good a heart, as her father, might take of the 
affair. If he chose to make up his mind instantly that the refugee 
was a criminal skulking from justice, he might deliver him up and 
undo the good she had done, for she felt assured that it was good. 
On the other hand, a knowledge of what had occurred this night 
might at some future time involve the old man in difficulty and dan- 
ger. He had acted in all sincerity in dismissing the police. She 
alone was accountable for misleading them, and so she elected to re- 
main. Let her take the sole responsibility of her impulsive action. 


12 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


Grace returned to liis bed, and the girl crept back to hers, to lie 
awake, counting the hours by the strokes of St. Patrick’s bell, wait- 
ing for the moment for her prisoner’s release, and thinking anxious- 
ly over this strange event that had broken upon the poverty-stricken 
monotony of her existence. 

Her imagination was possessed by a troubled wonder as to the 
“bad job ” that had been done. How had that man with the noble 
face got himself mixed up in such an affair? Though she did not 
read the papers, Marcella heard enough of what they contained from 
her father, who was a lively politician (as what Irishman is not?), 
to be well aware that she was living in troubled times, that a strug- 
gle was going on between class and class which she could not un- 
derstand, and that wicked deeds had been done. 

In her secret heart Marcella was on the side of the powers that be. 
The spirit of her lady-mother’s forefathers was at this moment more 
strong within her than sympathy with the ‘ ‘ people, ” who were to 
her represented chiefly by the drinking, idle, and disorderly crowd 
who made the slums around her hideous on a Saturday night. 

Her heart yearned towards the beings of nice living, refined hab- 
its, and finer perceptions, whom she vaguely knew as the upper 
classes, and of whose kind she felt herself to be. More wise, more 
intelligent, better educated than the others, why should they not be 
more fitted to regulate the affairs of the world? She trusted them, 
blindly following the instinct that was in her blood. She reflected 
now that if an outrage had been committed in the streets, the gen- 
tleman in her keeping was little likely to have been concerned in it. 

Had the man been of a coarser mould, had he failed, when seen, 
to match with the vibrations of his voice which had gained admit- 
tance by appealing to her charity, she should, she told herself, have 
awakened her father directly and placed the affair in his hands. 
But the secret of a person like this she could venture to keep to her- 
self. Something which she could not have . described in the stran- 
ger’s face, an expression not easily analyzed even by persons ac- 
customed to ticket and label their thoughts, had impressed the 
untutored girl so vividly that the countenance must henceforth re- 
main on her memory as the incarnation of all that was strong, chiv- 
alrous, and stainless in manhood. 

Quick and keen in her perceptions, she recognized this fact as she 
lay thinking, and was glad that she had seen the face. During the 
rest of that life of hers which was to be spent sewing in a garret, 
among coarse surroundings, she could hold it in her memory, much 
as she cherished the picture of her patron saint upon the w T all. 

At last hearing the hour beginning to toll at which she was to 
give back his liberty to the intruder, she arose, dressed quickly, and 
not daring to strike a light, made her way by the glimmer of the 
faint moonlight into the mouldy recesses of the panelled chamber. 
The closet was quickly opened, and the stranger stepped out of it. 

“I heard the police making search,” he said, “and I know how 
prudent you have been for my sake. How is it possible for me to 
thank you?” 


NOTHING WRONG. 


13 


“ I want no thanks,” said the girl. “The poor are accustomed to 
do any little good turn they can. It was fortunate for you that you 
happened to knock at this door, though, for in no other house would 
there have been a closet like that.” 

“ Yes, it was providential; I do not overlook that part of it. But 
any other girl would have raised an alarm. I am deeply grateful 
for your caution, and your trust in me, both of which have been of 
the utmost service to me.” 

“You may wonder, perhaps, that I did not tell my father,” said 
Marcella; and even in the moonlight he could see the vivid color 
that dyed her face as the idea occurred to her that possibly he thought 
her less maidenly, even if more self-reliant than others would have 
been under the circumstances ; ‘ ‘ and if you had been any other man, 
I would have done so.” 

Any other man! Was it possible this girl of the Liberties, whom 
he had never seen before, could recognize him? 

“I do not mean that I know who you are,” she said, apprehend- 
ing his thought, and quick to correct the impression her words had 
made, “but only that I know that you are good by your face. It 
was not that I wanted to be bold, but I thought I could venture to 
take care of you myself, and that it would be sure to be the safest 
course for you.” 

“ I understand you perfectly,” said the stranger, trying to conceal 
the admiration aroused in him by the straight, proud glance of her 
beautiful eyes, the graceful gesture with which she threw out her 
hand, giving her words a kind of impassioned emphasis. He would 
not distress her maidenly pride by words or looks of masculine com- 
pliment. “You are a woman of fine instincts as well as perfect 
courage,” he went on, wondering at himself for speaking to this 
humble girl in the same language he would have used to an equal. 
But in manner as well as appearance, he reflected, she was far be- 
yond her class. 

Even in his own hour of difficulty, which was not over yet, he 
could not help feeling curious to know something more of this 
strange girl, with her peculiar beauty, her mournful, steadfast eyes 
and thrilling voice. How was her presence to be accounted for in 
this abode of poverty, in this neighborhood of wretchedness and 
vice? “Truly the Irish are a wonderful race,” he thought, “ when 
such creatures can spring up in the very cellars of our cities.” He 
glanced around to impress the scene upon his memory with a strong 
conviction that he would in the future look back upon it with ex- 
ceeding interest — the decaying old room with its mouldy ceiling, rot- 
ting panels, and mysterious and friendly closet, and the dark head 
and pale brows of the girl dimly seen in the scanty moonlight, as 
she waited patiently till it was his pleasure to follow her from the 
chamber, to allow her to finish the task she had undertaken for him 
by letting him noiselessly out of the house and closing the door as 
silently behind him. 

“At all events, I shall never forget this kindness,” he said; “and 
now, if you will allow me tq offer you something—” 


14 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


Emboldened by the certainty that one so wretchedly dressed and 
living in such a house must be miserably poor, he attempted to put 
money in her hand. But the girl shrunk from the touch of it, and 
quickly drew several steps farther away from him. Poor as she was, 
and miserable as were her prospects, she would not take money for 
this charity she had done. The man whom she had sheltered and 
succored, unknown as he was, had already become her hero, her 
; ■protege , in some sort her child, by virtue of her efforts for him. She 
would not have her part in him blotted out like a settled score. 

“I cannot,” she said, eagerly; “I cannot! The poor are accus- 
tomed to serve others without payment. I am glad to have been of 
any little use to you. Do not spoil it all by paying for what can- 
not be bought.” 

“ You are a strange, unusual girl,” he said. “ Well, I cannot dis- 
tress my benefactress. You will not refuse, however — I trust you 
will not refuse — to take some little token of my gratitude. This 
ring is not very valuable,” he added, drawing one from his finger. 
“ I have nothing else to offer you at this moment. You will spoil 
all if you deny me the pleasure of remembering afterwards that you 
accepted it.” 

She leaned forward and looked with interest at the ring. Yes, 
she would take this shining circlet as a memorial of this night, which 
had given a living form and voice to the ideal of her dreams. 

She held forth her hand for it with sudden eagerness, and he 
dropped it in her palm. 

“May I put it on your finger?” 

She hesitated, and then held up her hand, while he placed the 
ring on a finger too slender to hold it in safety long. 

The next moment they had passed the threshold of the rotting old 
chamber, and were descending the staircase in the dark, slowly and 
carefully for fear of awaking the weaver. 

As her hand was on the lock of the door, he said to her, earnestly, 
“ It is possible that I may never see you again in this world, but if 
so, remember, whatever may come to pass, that I repeat I have not 
been in hiding here because of any criminal thing that I have 
done.” 

“ If I had not been sure of it, I should not have acted as I did,” 
said Marcella, firmly; and then the door opened and closed, and the 
stranger was gone. 

Marcella listened anxiously in the hall for a few moments. It was 
a safe hour, she hoped, for his return to his home, wherever that 
home might be; an hour when the late people have all gone to rest 
at last and the early people have not got up. With a vehement 
prayer for his safety she went softly back to her own room, and lit 
her lamp and examined her ring, the only proof remaining to her 
that this wonderful adventure was not entirely a dream. It was a 
very old, slender hoop set with a few pearls; not extremely valuable, 
as the donor had said, but priceless in the eyes of its new owner. 
She threaded it on a string and hung it round her neck: there let it 
remain forever, as an earnest of the happy service she had done. 


NOTHING WRONG. 


15 


Then she took out her sewing and worked for an hour and thought 
again and again over every look and every accent of the stranger. 
No fear that she had done wrong in admitting him troubled her. As 
she had said to him, the poor are accustomed to do service to each 
other, and, she might have added, they do not always stop to think 
of the cost. To her mind it was the most simple and rational thing 
in the world to harbor a fellow-creature who was in trouble. The 
secrecy from her father had been justified by the exigencies of the 
case. The stranger had thought so, and had thanked her for it. 

“Iam deeply grateful for your caution and your trust in me,” he 
had said, “and both have been of the utmost service to me.” 

Again and again she wondered what was the danger from which 
she had saved him. What was it that he could not openly face with 
that brave and piercing glance? 

Six o’clock rang, and the people began to stir sn the streets, and 
Marcella quenched her light, and put on her shabby old cloak and 
went out to mass, picking her way through the gutters and seeing 
the day break over the squalor of the streets. This early hour of 
the morning, when she could walk alone through a sort of rarefied 
atmosphere not of this earth, with her eyes on the red dawnlight that 
just touched the chimneys at a street coi ner as she passed, or on the 
silvery clouds that floated behind the ugly roofs above her, was the 
only happy one she knew in the twenty -four. It led her to the 
church where she was accustomed to carry all her sorrows and 
temptations, leaving them at the foot of the altar, and taking away 
in their place something that enabled her to get through her day, if 
not with the gladness of a saint, at least with a certain meek resig- 
nation. 

Here, in the dim shades of one of the poorest churches of the peo- 
ple, she found the lamp of faith ever burning, and the promises of 
the Lord written all over the walls around her. Why should she 
despair whom He had saved? Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
possess the land. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be 
comforted. She mourned, and she should be comforted. She would 
try to be meek that she might arrive at her heavenly inheritance. If 
life must be a bleak journey, she would endeavor to travel it brave- 
ly, following all along the Way of the Cross on her knees — as now. 

As she moved from one dark corner of the church to another, 
faring along that dolorous way, just able to see in the faint dawn 
the figure in the great tragic drama, her eyes discerning eagerly one 
form holding ever on its painful road and beckoning her to come on, 
her heart grew wonderfully lighter, and she felt a strong conviction 
that her future would not be made harder for her than she could 
bear. 

The church was crowded at that early hour with a multitude of 
patient toilers and sufferers, delicate and ill-fed girls on their way to 
a too-long day’s work, the hopeless repetition of which was gradual- 
ly killing them; careworn mothers of families, with piteous faces, 
praying passionately for help for the souls and bodies they had in 
charge; withered and half-starved old men and women who had crept 


16 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


from the wretched dens where they hid, from the poor-house to the 
feet of Christ in the dim dawn, unwilling to show their faces in the 
fuller daylight. To these Marcella’s heart turned from the happier 
and healthier faces which helped to fill the church. The strong men 
and women who had come to get a blessing on the tolerably prosper- 
ous work of their day had not the same interest for her as had the 
wretched. Across her prayer for all who were in trouble or danger 
came suddenly the sound of the voice of the stranger she had suc- 
cored, and the anxious though fearless expression of his eyes, and 
finishing her prayer with a hearty supplication for his welfare she 
reluctantly quitted the church and went home. 

As she retraced her steps through mud and dirt, now painfully vis- 
ible, the rainbows of the dawn had vanished from above the roofs, 
and the leaden sky of wintry day looked sullenly down on the city’s 
slums. 

Well, what matter did it make, so long as the lights on the ever- 
lasting hills could be discerned beyond the roofs of this world by 
the eyes of faith. As she entered the gloomy door of her home 
Marcella felt buoyed up with hope that she should in some future 
day which she could not now see live a fuller, nobler, and more use- 
ful life than she had known as yet, and that her patience in the pres- 
ent moment might go far to prepare her for that day. 

With a brighter face than usual she prepared her father’s break- 
fast. Presently he came in with a newspaper in his hand. 

“Look here!” he cried. “The police were not wrong about that 
bad job they were talkin’ about. There was a murder done in the 
city last night, not half a dozen streets away from us.” 

“Murder!” echoed Marcella, turning whiter than the milk she was 
pouring into his tea. 

“There now, girl, ye needn’t look so frightened. Nobody can say 
we harbored or hid the assassins, as they wanted to even to us. Make 
haste and give me my breakfast while I read the particulars. And 
mind, I’ll want you to take some tabinet to Merrion Square this 
mornin’.” 


CHAPTER III. 

AT HOME IN MERRION SQUARE. 

Mrs. TimotRy O’Flaherty O’Kelly was sitting in her own par- 
ticular snuggery in her handsome house in Merrion Square, and 
opposite to her on the hearth sat Father Daly, of Ballydownvalley, 
Distresna, Back-o’-the-mountains, in Connaught. All of the above 
three names had to be put on an envelope expected to find its way 
into the good priest’s hand when he was at home. Back-o’-the- 
mountains was the post-town, the name of which had been Englified 
for convenience’ sake. Ballydownvalley was the parish administered 
by Father Daly, and Distresna was the town-land on which his 
thatched cabin and cabbage-garden stood. 


AT HOME IN MERRION SQUARE. 


17 


“ No, Father Daly,” the lady was saying, “with all due respect td 
you and your views, I must assure you I have made up my mind 
that I will never be induced to return to Crane’s Castle. Since the 
people have become so ungrateful as to refuse to be satisfied to live 
under the rule of an O’Kelly without grumbling, I will no longer 
sacrifice my own little pleasures in life to spend my time among 
them, and to show them my countenance. They object to their 
rents — the rents that their forefathers paid without complaint — ” 

“ Or promised to pay and could not,” put in the priest. 

“True, the rents were often remitted, for which grace they did 
not scorn to be deeply and everlastingly grateful. The present race 
will never be thankful for anything.” 

“Try them,” said Father Daly, dryly. 

“ Try them? Really, Father Daly, I am astonished at you. Have 
I not built them a school-house, put them up new houses, in which 
they refused to live — ” 

“ Not being able to meet the demand for increased rent which the 
mere possession of better dwellings did not enable them to pay,” 
gaid Father Daly, quietly. 

“ Did I not give the women flannel petticoats and shawls when 
they were so miserably clad that I was ashamed of them as my ten- 
antry?” persisted the old lady, with an angry flash of the eyes. 

“And paid for them out of the surplus rent which was in your 
pocket and ought to have been in theirs, ” returned the priest, with 
mild bluntness. 

Mrs. O’Kelly breathed hard, and sat still for a few moments, try- 
ing bravely to restrain her wrath, for she was a good Catholic and a 
kind-hearted woman according to her lights, and to quarrel with old 
Father Daly, who had been parish priest of Ballydownvalley for 
thirty years, whom she knew to be honest, unselfish, and devoted to 
his duty, besides being her sincere friend, with all his plain-speak- 
ing^ould have been to her a catastrophe much to be deplored. She 
looked upon him as one so blinded by the heavenly lights of his vo- 
cation as to be an impossible guide to a sensible woman of the world 
like herself; and though, from a religious point of view, she held 
that there could be no more worthy soul alive than the priest, yet 
from her vantage ground as practical woman and landlord, her own 
common-sense, as she called it, appeared to her a far more respecta- 
ble thing than the weak enthusiasm of any one whose only concern 
in the universe was avowedly with charity and prayer. 

“No, I will not be angry with, you, Father Daly,” she said, “ though 
I find it very hard to keep my temper. The O’Kellys were always 
friends with their priests, no matter — ” 

“How misguided the priests might be in venturing to give 
them a warning,” said Father Daly, slyly, with a twinkle in his 
eye. 

“Exactly. Priests are mortals, after all, you know, old friend, 
and they are liable to make mistakes like the rest of us sinners. ” 

“ Too true.” 

“And so, you must allow me to remain where I am, and do my 

2 


18 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


duty in my own way. I have been driven out of the country where 
my ancestors, who spent their money freely there — ” 

“Hunting, drinking, roistering, keeping open house for their equals 
in station and in folly,” said Father Daly, “ not in any way that was 
of use to the poor. If you were one of these, my dear lady, I would 
not be asking you to return to Distresna. Better for the people to 
be deserted by their natural protectors than to be subject to the bad 
example of such as the O ’Kellys of by-gone days.” 

“ I agree with you there, though the people need not have been de- 
serted if they would have learned to be content. But their grumbles 
and their menaces I will not endure. And I wonder greatly, Father 
Daly, that you would choose such a time to come here and make 
such a proposal to me. The murder that occurred last night, of a 
landlord whose property lies not fifty miles from mine, ought to be 
a sufficient answer, and a very terrible one, to all your suggestions 
as to my conduct. There was a man who, I doubt not, did his duty.” 

Father Daly sighed heavily. 

“I cannot enter into that question,” he said. “All I can say is, 
if you were to follow my advice you would run no risk. I pray 
■God,” he went on, with deep emotion in his face and voice, “that 
whatever may happen, none of my flock may ever be stained by ever 
so small a participation in the crime of Cain. If I sympathize with 
their cares and miseries, and strive with them to obtain redress, it is 
only on the express condition that they obey my teachings on high- 
er matters, and keep themselves sinless before Heaven.” 

“I am sure you do yOur best,” said Mrs. O’Kelly, in an uncon- 
sciously patronizing tone. “But I am not going to take the odds as 
to whether the secret Fenians of your parish may receive orders to 
finish me or not. I have other duties in life besides trying to humor 
an unreasonable tenantry. I go to daily mass, even when the weath- 
er is cold and my rheumatism troublesome. I have many charities 
on my hands here. I do my share in upholding the respectability 
of the Irish gentry in Dublin. I pay my respects periodically to the 
viceroy of my queen. Neither do I forget to patronize the home 
manufactures of my country; only this day I expect a parcel of rich 
tabinet, woven in Dublin, to make me a castle train. My modiste 
wished me to have jt of Lyons velvet, but I said ‘ No, not unless it 
can be made for me in Ireland.’ But, oh, Father Daly, there is some- 
thing else I want to say to you. What am I to do about these dread- 
ful O’Flahertys?” 

“ Who are they, ma’am?” said the priest, his mind still running on 
his miserable parishioners. 

“ Why, don’t you know? The people who expect to be my heirs; 
hardly kindred, so very distantly related, and have always been as 
disagreeable to me as they could be. I simply can’t bear them, Fa- 
ther Daly, and yet I have no nearer of kin. Am I obliged to leave 
them my property, or can I bequeath it all to the Church or the 
poor?” 

Father Daly reflected a few moments, while an expression some- 
thing like bitterness flitted over his benevolent countenance. He 


AT HOME IN HERRION SQUARE. 


19 


knew the O’Flahertys to be rack-renting, overbearing people, whose 
tenants were in even a more wretched plight than the people of Dis- 
tresna. It seemed, then, that his flock were doomed to fall from bad 
to worse. As for the alternative so wildly proposed by the lady as 
a last means of defeating the impertinent hopes of the objects of her 
dislike — that is, the idea of her leaving her property to the poor—yveM 
it suggested to the priest one of those fine ironical touches which 
life is always putting to our plans and projects. On the one hand, 
a half-starved population drained of a rent a fair deduction from 
which would help to feed them, and on the other a fortune setting 
out to look for the poor! 

“I cannot undertake to advise you about that,” he said. “Are 
you sure you have no nearer kindred in the world than the O’Fla- 
hertys?” 

“ I am afraid — I am quite sure. For a long time I had some hope 
that a younger branch of our family might turn up. There was one 
who sunk in the world and was forgotten. He might have left heirs, 
but I hardly hope now to discover them, if they exist. At one time 
I even thought of adopting somebody. There is Bryan Kilmorey, 
a fine fellow and always a pet of mine till lately. Since he has 
shown such very erratic tendencies, quite mixed himself up with 
Nationalists in politics, I, of course, have changed my views. And 
seeing that he has disappointed me, I shall look for no one else. 
Now, stay, you are not going away, Father Daly. Would it really 
be right to leave all I have to the poor?” 

Father Daly had taken his hat, and only for this question would 
have gone out of the room with his present thoughts unspoken. 
But Mrs. O’Kelly’s eagerly repeated query about the poor was the 
last straw that broke the back of his patience. 

“When you are about making that will,” he said, “ consult some 
one who knows less of your hardness to those poor whom God 
placed in your power in this life than I do. Better, I tell you, to 
do good while you live than try to snatch back at it with your dead 
hand. Better be just with your worldly goods from a pure inten- 
tion, than assume generosity in your last hour for the purpose of 
gratifying your dislike to your neighbor.” 

He raised his hand in warning, and the old lady got up from her 
chair and confronted him with angry eyes and a convulsive move- 
ment of the head. 

“That will do, Father Daly,” she said, with a hysterical quaver in 
her voice. “I will trouble you no further at present. Do not let 
me detain you any longer, and please don’t return here till I send 
for you.” 

“I will not, ma’am. Trust me, I will not, ’’said the priest, faint- 
ly, and turned away to the door, feeling with a pang that he had 
lost an old friend and injured the cause of his people as well. He 
fumbled for his stick in the hall, and took an umbrella instead, then 
had to turn back and rectify his mistake. 

“ Now, what does be ailin’ Father Daly to-day anyway?” said the 
butler to himself, as he stood on the threshold of the big hall door 


20 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


and watched the old man trudging down the square, absently hold- 
ing his stick upright like an umbrella, for it was raining. ‘ ‘ I sup- 
pose the mistress is after rakin’ him about thim rents down at Dis- 
thresna. Throth an’ she might lave Father Daly alone. But sure, 
though she’s the good misthress to live with, still she does be the 
divil when she takes a thing in her head.” 

It was Mrs. O’Flaherty O’Kelly’s day at home, and visitors were 
already waiting for her in the drawing-room, whither she repaired 
as soon as she could remove the traces of excitement from her coun- 
tenance. As she sailed in with her rich black silk dress trailing be- 
hind her, her black lace shawl floating from her shoulders, and her 
white lace cap crowning her whiter locks, she looked as stately an 
old lady as could be found in the three kingdoms. 

“ Dear Mrs. O’Kelly, how very well you’re looking!” cried a voice 
with a Galwegian brogue, and a tall florid young woman came with 
a bouncing movement across the floor to meet her. 

“Thank you, Miss O’Flaherty; I don’t know that a flush arising 
from vexation makes one look particularly well, especially when it 
gets into the nose. Now, my flush always get into my nose, and so 
I would rather you didn’t notice it.” 

“Dear Mrs. O’Kelly, you are always so original. And no won- 
der you are vexed. Everybody is so wretched about this dreadful 
murder. Nobody knows whose turn will come next. And to think 
of them following him to Dublin! It is very comforting at any rate 
to those who take the risk of staying on the spot all the year round, 
as poor papa does at Mount Ramshackle. People who run away 
don’t fare any better, it seems.” 

“ Humph!” said Mrs. O’Kelly, twitching the end of her lace shawl 
with nervous fingers. She was well aware of Mr. O’Flaherty’s rea- 
sons for living permanently at Mount Ramshackle. He had so free- 
ly squandered his once handsome fortune that he found himself un- 
able to live anywhere else, and besides, it was an open secret that 
he was a little too fond of the “mountain dew ” of his native wilds, 
and, being so, preferred to blush unseen in his privacy rather than 
show his rubicund countenance on the highways of the world. So, 
when Miss O’Flaherty boasted that her papa had never deserted his 
post at home, while other people lived as absentees wherever they 
pleased, Mrs. O’Kelly always said “Humph!” 

“ But I am sure I do not wonder,” Miss O’Flaherty went on, sip- 
ping her tea, “at any one running away from such ungrateful sav- 
ages. If I did not escape sometimes myself I should die of disgust.” 

Now, Mrs. O’Kelly knew well that whatever right she had to the 
gratitude of the tenantry, the O’Flaherty’s had none. They had 
built no houses and bestowed no petticoats. The tradition of their 
family, still admirably cherished, had always been to spend two- 
pence for every penny they could wring out of the wretched tillers 
of the rocky and boggy wilderness which was crowned by the glory 
of Mount Ramshackle — owing the balance to any one who would 
credit them. Miss O’Flaherty looked on the poor of her father’s 


AT HOME IN MERRION SQUARE. 


21 


estate much as she regarded the lean horses that dragged her up and 
down the hilly roads, and the sheep that were killed to furnish the 
leg of mutton for the family table. They were there for her sup- 
port and convenience, and any sign of unwillingness on their part 
was to be infinitely derided. Mrs. O’Kelly knew that in very truth 
there was much more sympathy between her own views of the peo- 
ple and those of Father Daly than between her own views and those 
of Miss O’Flaherty. And therefore, though to many and various 
ears the lady of Distresna would formally abuse her tenants and 
complain of their treatment of her, yet never would she be betrayed 
into such weakness in presence of an O’Flaherty. Between them 
and herself she drew such a broad line that by no chance or artifice 
could she be brought to mingle her grievances with theirs. And it 
must be said, in justice to her, that her objection to think of the 
O’Flahertys as her heirs was not entirely caused by personal dis- 
like of them. In spite of her present anger at the peasantry of Dis- 
tresna, she felt a genuine distaste to the idea of their falling into 
O’Flaherty hands. And this distaste was strengthened when it 
happened, as it sometimes would, that after listening to Miss O’Fla- 
herty’s views, as now, she heard her in conversation with some one 
else alluding to the estate of Distresna as if it were already in the 
possession of her family. 

Miss O’Flaherty was not in the dark as to this peculiarity of the 
old lady, but thought herself quite safe in teasing her. She had no 
nearer of kin to whom to leave her lands. But when Mrs. O’Kelly 
refused to reply to her remarks, as now, and began to twitch the 
corner of her shawl, Miss O’Flaherty thought it prudent to change 
the conversation. 

“I’m just after meeting Bryan Kilmorey in Nassau Street,” said 
Miss O’Flaherty, who was not above sprinkling her conversation 
with Hibernicisms, “ and I asked him what he thought of this mur- 
der, and how he intended to go on defending the people and talking 
about their virtues.” 

“ And pray, what did he answer you?” asked Mrs. O’Kelly, erect- 
ing her head as if to declare that here was another of her pet hob- 
bies going to be taken from under her and ridden to death before 
her eyes, and that she would not have it, would seize it by the reins 
and bring it to a dead stop rather than trust it to another. 

“ I should think Mr. Bryan Kilmorey would have a keener appre- 
ciation of the iniquity of murder than you could have, in proportion 
to the superior size of his heart and brains. ” 

Miss O’Flaherty tittered. “Dear Mrs. O’Kelly, you do use such 
eloquent language. Do you think men’s hearts and brains are really 
larger than ours, now? I am nearly as tall as he is, you know. I 
confess he remarked that he had no sympathy with murderers; but 
rather spoiled the statement, however, by saying that his opinion of 
the virtues of the people remained the same.” 

“ A rash fool is sometimes more admirable than a prudent rogue,” 
said Mrs. O’Kelly, oracularly. 

“Well, I wouldn’t quite call him a fool,” said Miss O’Flaherty. 


22 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“I should think not,” retorted the old lady; and she was just 
sharpening her tongue to say something which would make it clear 
to her visitor that she did not forget the court that had at one time 
been paid, and in vain, to her favorite-in-disgrace by the ladies of 
Mount Ramshackle, when more visitors poured in, and the conver- 
sation became general, fluctuating as to subject between the terrible 
murder in the city streets last night and the approaching drawing- 
room at the Castle. 

“ So lucky it was not an official!” said a sprightly girl who was 
looking forward to the season of amusement which is so short in 
Dublin. “ How dreadful if anything had stopped the Castle balls!” 

“ Now, Katty,” said her sister, “don’t pretend to be so heartless.” 

“Well, I did not even know him, and I hear he was an ogre,” 
said Miss Katty, pouting. “I wouldn’t kill even an ogre myself. 
But I never did him any harm, and I don’t see why he should inter- 
fere with my dancing.” 

“He will not,” said another lady. “What are you going to wear 
at the drawing-room?” 

“Now, ladies,” said Mrs. O’Kelly, “I am going to petition you 
in favor of tabinet. I have been directed to a first-rate weaver, who 
will give you a splendid quality cheaper than the shops. I have 
ordered a train myself, and I am expecting the material home this 
afternoon. If it comes in time, I will show it to you.” 

“The colors are so ugly,” said a graceful woman, the wife of a 
leading queen’s counsel who was on the eve of being made solicitor- 
general, a lady who had accepted all the recent improvements in 
color as to dress and furnishing. “ Poplin will never revive until 
the new delicate shades are introduced.” 

“I forgot your aesthetic tendencies,” said Mrs. O’Kelly with a 
compassionate smile. “Indeed I must say, for my part, I hope the 
weavers will keep to their genuine greens, blues, and ambers, and 
leave us something with a bit of color in it. I confess I am not of 
the die-away school, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.” 

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy slightly shrugged her graceful shoulders, and 
glanced round the fiercely ugly room which boldly claimed for its 
mistress a place in the first rank of the Philistines. The builder had 
long ago made the room handsome, with ceiling exquisitely carved 
in wreaths and figures, and with noble old chimney-pieces of inlaid 
and sculptured marble. But the gilded consol-tables, the carpet of 
brilliant varieties, the crude colors swearing at one another from 
ottoman to couch, and from easy-cliair to lounge, so distracted the 
eye that the only beautiful things of the interior passed unnoticed. 

“ But, Mrs. O’Kelly,” said another young woman, the daughter of 
a prominent Castle official, who had of late bravely improved her 
apartments at home, “I assure you the new colors are admitted to 
be the best. Why, even in the wilds of Donegal the peasants are 
knitting them into stockings and jerseys for sale. New dyes have 
been sent over from England.” 

“ It may be, it may be,” said Mrs. O’Kelly. “ I do not worship 
everything English as you do, my dear Miss Nugent. I hold that 


AT HOME IN MERRION SQUARE. 


23 


just as many mistakes are made in England as in Ireland, which 
God knows is saying enough.” 

And then, feeling that her temper, which had never recovered 
Father Daly’s home-thrust, was getting the better of her again, the 
old lady got up and rang the bell. 

“ See if that parcel of tabinet has come home yet, Murphy,” she 
said, “ and if so, bring it to me.” 

“ There’s a young woman down below with it, ma’am,” said Mur- 
phy, briskly. 

“Bring me the parcel, then, and tell the young woman to wait,” 
said Mrs. O’Kelly. 

The poplin but a few hours ago taken from Grace’s loom was car- 
ried to the drawing-room, opened out, looped about the chairs, hung 
over the back of a couch, displayed in every light for the admiration 
of the assembled ladies. 

“ You see, this is only a sober purple,” said Mrs. O’Kelly, “as I 
would not, of course, go out in anything gay. And for even duller 
people than me there is a lovely gray, and they have a very good 
brown also, and a handsome myrtle green. But I confess, if I were 
young, it would be the emerald green, and the turquoise blue, and the 
carnation pink, that I would be thinking of.” 

After the tabinet had been admired, criticised, and pulled about 
for half an hour, and two fresh teapots had been emptied, fortunate- 
ly not over it, but only over the debate upon it, the visitors disap- 
peared at last, and left Mrs. O’Flaherty O’Kelly rather tired after her 
“day.” 

“ Roll it up again, Murphy,” she said, wearily, looking at the pop- 
lin, “and put it in the paper, and then poke the fire. And stay, I 
will go down myself and speak to that young woman. Where is 
she, Murphy?” 

“I put her in the library, ma’am,” said Murphy. 

Mrs. O’Kelly drew her shawl around her and moved slowly down 
the stairs, sighing as she went. What with her feud with her people, 
Father Daly’s denunciation of her right-minded conduct, Miss O’Fla- 
herty’s general unpleasantness and particular fling at Bryan Kilmorey, 
and finally, the newfangled waj r s of fashionable women who would 
not wear sensibly-dyed poplin for the good of their country, her 
heart felt very sore. What a world of contradictions and misunder- 
standing this was! It were good to flee away from it and be at 
rest! 

The library door was not quite shut, and she did not make suffi- 
cient noise in opening it further to disturb the young woman from 
the weaver’s, who was standing at the table looking up at a portrait 
that hung over the chimney-piece. In the long strip of looking- 
glass that divided the mantle-shelf from the picture-frame the face 
of the gazing girl, whose back was to the door, was reflected, and 
Mrs. O’Kelly had not taken two steps into the room before she stopped 
and stood quite still in astonishment. The upraised face framed in 
its shabby little black bonnet which she saw in the glass of course 
belonged to the young woman who had brought her tabinet from the 


24 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


weaver’s, and yet to Mrs. O’Kelly’s eyes at that moment it appeared 
to be exactly the same face as that of the lady in the picture on 
which its eyes were so earnestly fixed. 

Recovering from her surprise, Mrs. O’Kelly spoke, and Marcella 
Grace, startled to find that she had so far forgotten herself, in her 
study of the picture, as to fail to hear the lady enter the room, turned 
quickly round, coloring deeply. 

> ‘It was you who brought the poplin? Yes; well, please to tell 
Mr. Grace that I like it very much, and will do my best to get him 
some orders,” said Mrs. O’Kelly, having got quite to the other side 
of the table, where she could see the weaver’s messenger in a better 
light. Then she dropped into a chair, and looked long at the girl, 
turned away and poked the fire, and at last faced the girl again and 
stared at her. 

“ Thank you,” said Marcella; “shall you require the piece of gray 
poplin you spoke about? My father would like to know.” 

“No — that is, yes. Wait a moment, young woman. I am a little 
tired, and I forget this moment what I wanted to say to you.” 

She put her hand to her head, and holding it there, looked covertly 
at'the face of the portrait. 

“Yes, it is a remarkable likeness,” she was thinking, “ a very un- 
accountable likeness. How in the world can there be such a resem- 
blance between my poor dead sister and this weaver’s girl?” 

“Are you Mr. Grace’s daughter?” she asked, as Marcella stood pa- 
tiently waiting her pleasure. Now that her passing blush had dis- 
appeared, the girl was very pale, and the clear dark beauty of her 
eyes, with their proud yet tender gravity of expression, struck the 
■old lady forcibly. 

“Yes, ’’said Marcella, “you may safely trust me with any mes- 
sage to him.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” said Mrs. O’Kelly, absently, not knowing what 
she was saying. She felt so strangely attracted to this weaver’s girl 
that she could not bear to let her go out of her presence without 
further parley; and yet she could think of no pretence upon which 
to detain her. Feeling that some effort was necessary, she struggled 
to make one. 

“ Well, my dear, your father is a very clever weaver, and I want 
to talk about him and his work. You see, it is raining, and I hope 
you are not in a hurry.” 

“Not at all,” said Marcella, “though I do not mind the rain.” 

“Now, I wonder if Murphy would think it very extraordinary if 
I asked him to bring the girl a cup of tea? Well, I don’t care if he 
does. I am mistress in my own house. And I will know something 
more about this handsome creature,” thought Mrs. O’Kelly; and 
she rang the bell. 

“ Murphy, make some fresh tea, and bring it here.” 

“Is it here, ma’am?” 

“Yes, Murphy.” 

“ I will, ma’am;” and Murphy stared and withdrew. 

“Now, my dear, take off your wet cloak and sit down. You 


AT HOME IN MERRION SQUARE. 


25 


must know I have taken it into my head to patronize poplin, and I 
am doing my very best to stir up a feeling for it among my acquaint- 
ances.” 

“ You are very good, madam,” said Marcella, as the old lady helped 
her to take off her cloak and made her sit near the fire. The tea was 
brought, and while the girl drank it, Mrs. O’Kelly proceeded to ex- 
plain to her all about the objections which the fashionable ladies 
were making to the old-fashioned dyes, and to impress upon her that 
there was a necessity for introducing new ones in the manufacture 
of poplin. An hour ago she could not have believed that she should 
ever be induced to advocate so absurd a movement, but in her ea- 
gerness to see more of this interesting young woman, she had grasped 
at the subject as affording the only excuse she could think of for a 
conversation. 

Marcella listened with interest, but when the lady had ceased 
speaking, said, sighing, 

‘ ‘ I fear, madam, my father is not young enough to make efforts 
to improve his trade. I understand your meaning perfectly, and I 
hope the younger weavers may profit by your advice. But my poor 
father’s day for such things is over, I am greatly afraid.” 

Mrs. O’Kelly listened, wondering to hear how well she expressed 
herself. 

“Well, we shall see, ’’she said; “I do not mean to lose sight of 
your father, however.” And then she prolonged the conversation, 
by various little artifices inducing the girl to speak her mind, till at 
last she could make no further excuse for detaining her, and allowed 
her to depart. 

As it was now quite dusk, Mrs. O’Kelly rang for her reading-lamp, 
and when again left alone, stood before the fireplace holding the 
light above her head and gazing at her sister’s portrait. Truly, the 
face was wonderfully like the young face under the little black bon- 
net that had confronted her for the last half-hour. There was the 
same broad brow, expressive of mingled sentiment and strength, the 
same tender mouth, the same grave and steadfast eyes. The girl in 
the picture had more color in her face, and was richly dressed, and 
her dark hair was arranged in a by -gone fashion ; but yet the likeness 
remained. What a curious accidental resemblance ! 

That night Mrs. O’Kelly wakened with a start out of her first sleep, 
thinking her young sister long years dead, laid in her grave at the 
age of twenty-one, was standing by her bed and had spoken to her. 
“ These likenesses do spring up among branches of the same family, 
skipping a generation or two, ’’was the thought standing clearly in 
her mind, as if some one had said the words to her; and she lay 
awake all night after that, revolving the curious suggestion in her 
brain. How could the daughter of a weaver have any connection 
with her family? And then an echo of her own words, spoken to 
Father Daly, came floating across her memory — “there was one who 
sunk in the world and was forgotten. He might have left heirs, but 
one could hardly hope now to discover them, if they exist.” Long 
before the tardy daylight came, Mrs. O’Kelly had worked herself into 


26 


MAECELLA GEACE. 


a feverish state over these fancies, and was down-stairs half an hour 
earlier than usual, studying again the features of the long-dead sis- 
ter, who had been the darling of her early youth. 

“ I must see the girl again,” she decided, “ or I shall have a fever. 
I will send for patterns of all the colors of poplins at present made. 
That will be a good excuse. Probably by another light the young 
woman will look quite different. I was disturbed yesterday, and in 
a condition to become the prey of distressing faucies.” 

In the mean time Marcella had taken her way home, well pleased 
at hearing her father’s work commended, yet fearing that he would 
resent the lady’s suggestions for improvement. She knew he be- 
lieved his work to be, as it stood, the most perfect fabric in the world. 
Now, if he would only teach her his art, she would strive to profit 
by the hints offered; and if a good market were to open up, she 
might employ others to help in the work. A bright idea occurred 
to her, that if she could learn, unknown to him, from some other 
weaver in the neighborhood, she might insure a certain develop- 
ment for her plans before telling him of their existence. Then she 
could happily provide for his old age, and at the same time find full 
play for her own industrial activity. Having arrived so far in her 
bright speculations, she suddenly remembered that money might be 
necessary in order to start her fairly. How harrd that she seemed to 
be driven back from every opening which hope and energy pointed 
out to her! Where in all the wide world could she find even one 
pound to start her upon a profitable career? 

Wrapped in these thoughts, she had threaded the gayest thorough- 
fares of Dublin, without even seeing the people or the shops, but 
now, having arrived at the foot of Dame Street, before proceeding 
up Cork Hill towards the Castle, she shook herself out of her dreams 
and noticed the crowd standing right in her way, staring at the pla- 
cards hung out before the office of an evening newspaper. With a 
painful start she suddenly remembered some things that had for the 
moment passed from her mind— the curious events of the night be- 
fore, and the terrible fact of the murder committed in the streets not 
far from her home. For the placards on the newspaper office were 
declaring the news of the murder in huge letters to the world, and 
announcing a great reward for the apprehension of the murderer, or 
for information which might lead to the same. 

She stood for a few moments gazing at the placards, with a sharp 
line drawn between her smooth brows, while her imagination realized 
the thing that had occurred, and her heart grew chill with the horror 
of it. Then with a shudder she drew her thin mantle more closely 
round her, and turned her face away from the staring letters on the 
wall, and began to make her way as skilfully as she was able through 
the crowd. 

Doing so, she started and drew back a little, then slightly turned 
so as to get another glimpse of a face and figure standing on the 
pavement, with eyes fixed on the newspaper placards. “ One thou- 
sand pounds reward!” proclaimed the great letters on which this 
gazer’s eyes were fixed. It was the hero of last night’s adventure 


DISCOVERIES. 


27 


who stood there in the daylight before her, the man whom she had 
hidden in the closet, and whom the police had searched for in vain. 
Had it all been a dream, or had this noble-looking man, this gentle- 
man every inch, really lain concealed at her mercy, actually placed 
his liberty and safety in her hands? Mechanically she put her hand 
to her breast to feel the ring that hung round her neck, and the small, 
hard circlet, found by her touch even through the folds of her dress, 
assured her of the reality of much besides its own existence. 

Another glance at the gentleman standing in the crowd reading 
the newspaper placards convinced her as thoroughly that this was 
the man. There were the tall figure and brave carriage, also the 
pale, clean-cut features, piercing gray eyes, and forehead indicative 
of high resolve. His level brows were knit in thought as he stood 
gazing at the sinister proclamations. Having observed him eagerly 
for a few moments, Marcella became suddenly fearful that he might 
wheel round and see her so watching him, and she turned and hur- 
ried forward on her way. 

And all through the streets as she went, with the darkness descend- 
ing upon her, she heard the little newspaper boys shrieking their 
direful tidings along the pavements: “ Terrible murder in Dublin 
streets last night. One thousand pounds reward for any information 
of the murderers !” And she began to run, to escape out of reach 
of the piercing and ill-omened cries. 


CHAPTER IY. 

DISCOVERIES. 

During the next few days Marcella traversed many times that 
part of the city lying between the Liberties and Merrion Square; for 
Mrs. O’Kelly’s interest in the girl had no way decreased, and she 
made many excuses for bringing the weaver’s daughter to her side. 
Her father’s objection to the idea of new dyes “ which the rale ould 
quality in the days when Dublin had quality ” never thought of 
wanting, his increasing inability to work, and her own desire to take 
up his art herself, and improve upon it, and devote her energies to 
its development, made fruitful subjects of conversation between her 
patroness and herself, after the old lady had once for all won her re- 
gard and confidence. And meanwhile Mrs. O’Kelly had contrived 
to draw the girl’s personal history from her lips. Before a week had 
elapsed she had learned all about the lady-mother whose bitter re- 
verses of fortune had driven her to sit meekly at the weaver’s fire- 
side. 

There was a month of intense excitement for Mrs. O’Kelly, during 
which she had almost daily consultations with her solicitor, and fre- 
quently wept as she sat alone in the evenings under the portrait in 
her library. So lonely had she grown to feel in her great drawing- 


2S 


MARCELLA GRAC'E. 


room up stairs, that she had caused her work-basket, novel, and fa 
vorite footstool to be carried down to the room where her sister’s 
portrait hung, and where she was accustomed to receive Marcella in 
the mornings. And here she ransacked old desks, and sorted old 
family letters and papers, and eagerly read the communications for- 
warded to her every evening by her solicitor. 

At the end of a month her excitement rose to a climax when the 
result of investigations into the fate of a certain cousin of hers, who 
had ruined himself after the fashion of certain Connaught gentry of 
those times and disappeared from society, was announced to her, 
and when the supposition started in her mind by Marcella’s likeness 
to a family portrait finally gave place to certainty. On the formal 
page, and in the stiff terms of a lawyer’s letter, such positive assur- 
ance was conveyed to her one night as led her to drop upon her 
rheumatic knees and lift up her trembling hands to heaven, and 
thank God that a daughter had been given to her old age, and, we 
fear we must add, that the intolerable O’Flahertys were defeated. 

The next morning found her driving through Dublin mud into 
the objectionable region of the Liberties, with the intention of see- 
ing old Grace and breaking her extraordinary news to him. When 
the neat brougham stopped before the weaver’s door, the neighbors 
said to each other that Michael Grace was beginning to go up in the 
world again. 

Marcella was out upon some message for her father, and the weav- 
er was smoking his mid-day pipe alone, when the lady, having climbed 
his stair with difficulty, ushered herself into his presence. 

“I have come to see you, Mr. Grace. I am Mrs. O’Kelly. ” 

After a little preliminary skirmishing about poplins, she would 
proceed to open her battle with this coarse and common old man, 
who, unfortunately, stood between her and her desires. 

“Bedad, ma’am, and it’s welcome ye are to see the whole of my 
management. An’ I hope it’s another grand gown ye’re goin’ to 
order— something beautiful and bright, none o’ them pale, spiritless 
things they do be havin’ in the silks and satins in the shop-windows 
nowadays.” 

“ I hope to give you an excellent order, Mr. Grace. I like the old 
colors myself and will always wear them, but some of my friends 
cry out for more sickly tints. Fashion is a ridiculous thing; is it 
not, Mr. Grace?” 

“ ’Deed, an’ it is, ma’am. Niver a word of lie in that. But niver 
will Michael Grace sit before a loom to weave such rubbitch as thim 
pinks and greens,” he said, pitching a little bundle of patterns of 
silk contemptuously on the table. “ Why, ma’am, I’ve wove poplin 
that ’ud stand alone for her Excellencyess the Lady Liftenant — not 
this one, but her that was in the Castle whin I was a younger man, 
ma’am, an’ was a master-weaver; an’ ye wouldn’t have found holes 
in my stairs then, ma’am. Niver to spake,” he added, with a change 
of tone, “of all that I wove for my own wife, ma’am — her that was 
a lady born and bred, ma’am, body an’ soul, an’ betther blood niver 
came out o’ the province of ould Connaught.” 


DISCOVERIES. 


29 


It was only his way of dragging his wife’s name, half through 
boastfulness, half through genuine sentiment, into every conversa- 
tion he held, no matter with whom. The neighbors knew this, and 
would say, “Ay, Misther Grace, thrue for you, indeed,” and pass on, 
but Mrs. O’Kelly thought the confidence special to herself, and very 
• remarkable. Had any one prepared him for her coming? At all 
events this outspokenness of his smoothed the way for her own diffi- 
cult communication. 

“ I know, Mr. Grace, I know all about that,” she said, trying hard 
to patronize merely and not to betray her nervousness — “and it is 
about your wife I have come here to talk to you.” 

Grace stared, and then quietly laid aside the piece of grass-green 
tabinet he had been flourishing about in the light while he spoke. 

“I don’t see what you can know about her,” he said,“seein’ 
that none o’ her own sort ever looked the way she went, not for 
years before she fell so low as to become an honest weaver’s wife. 
No ladies came visitin’ to see Mrs. Michael Grace, ma’am. Them 
that had been her own left her to break her bit o’ a heart here at a 
fireside that was no fit shelter for her. And now, ma’am, what have 
ye got to say about her?” 

“Only this, that I have just discovered that your wife was the 
daughter of a first cousin of mine. And you must not scold me, Mr. 
Grace, for I never saw her, and her father was the person to blame.” 

Grace stood looking at his visitor and patroness with a dazed ex- 
pression, linked his loose hands together, and drew himself up with 
an air of incredible dignity. 

“It makes no odds about blame now, ma’am, ” he said. “I did 
my best for her, and she’s gone where all the fine cousins in the 
world can do nothin’ for her. The angels are her cousins now, 
ma’am, many thanks to you.” 

‘ ‘ But, Mr. Grace, though it cannot touch her, this may make a 
difference to her daughter!” 

At these words the weaver’s entire aspect underwent a sudden 
change. All the dignity and sentiment vanished from his face, min- 
gled cunning and triumph twinkled in his eyes, and his very attitude 
was expressive of the acuteness of his perception that something 
had turned up for his advantage. 

“That’s as may be, ma’am. But ye must remember she’s my 
daughter too. What was it you were thinkin’ of doin’ for her, 
ma’am?” 

“Your extreme frankness makes my task easier than I expected 
it to be, ’’said Mrs. O’Kelly. “Mr. Grace, I will be as candid as 
yourself. I am a childless old woman, and I have thought of adopt- 
ing your daughter as my own. I will place her in the position of 
life for which nature has fitted her, and to which her mother be- 
longed; and I will provide for her handsomely at my death.” 

‘ ‘ See that, now, ” said Grace, fumbling among his patterns, and 
pretending to give only half his attention to what the lady was 
saying. “ Sure an’ it would be an illigant settlin’, for her. An’ what 
would you be thinkin’ of doin’ for myself, ma’am?” 


30 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“ But, Mr. Grace, you are not my blood-relation.” 

“No, ma’am; and nothin’ at all, of coorse, to the girl that you’re 
takin’ from me— the child that I looked to for the comfort of my last 
days — not many of them, indeed, will I see.” 

After this a long conversation followed, and the end of it all was 
that Mrs. O’Kelly offered the weaver fifty pounds a year to give up 
his daughter, on condition that he was to see her no more, except on 
rare occasions, when she might find it convenient to pay him a visit. 
But this offer Grace indignantly refused. 

“ She’ll be here again to-morrow,” he reflected, “ doublin’ her pen- 
sion to me— and in the mane time I will talk to the girl about it. 
Sure it, is we’ll make a handsome thing out of it. Only we mustn’t 
be in too great a hurry settlin’ our bargain. Och, an’ faix it’s a fine 
sight betther than marryin’ the girl agin her will, and dependin’ for 
the rest o’ my time on a son-in-law! An’, bedad, when the girl gets 
her own way wid the lady, she’ll be takin’ her ould father out to 
drive wid her in her carriage every day. An’ it’s dinin’ wid the 
Lord Liftenant you’ll be, Michael Grace, before you die. Divil a 
doubt of it!” 

Finding the old fellow grew more impracticable the longer she 
stayed, Mrs. O’Kelly desisted from further bargaining on this occa- 
sion and departed, looking forward with keen pleasure to the unfold- 
ing of her intentions to Marcella, who as yet had heard no hint of 
the changes in store for her. 

When Marcella returned home with her scanty marketing, she 
found her father wrapped in clouds of tobacco- smoke, and beaming 
with mysterious delight. He broke his news to her cautiously, with 
a half fear that she would fly out of the house before he had finished, 
and bestow herself unconditionally on her prosperous kinswoman. 

“It’s a little story I was makin’ up to amuse myself,” he said ; 
“an’, if it comes thrue, we’ll have no more need for work; so you 
needn’t be takin’ looks at the loom. An’ ye needn’t be gettin’ in a 
fright nayther about marryin’, for, if it comes to pass, it’s a duke 
you’ll be condescendin’ to for your husband. An’ maybe it’s the 
Queen herself ’ll be recavin’ us at her table — the pair of us!” 

“Father!” said Marcella, reproachfully, thinking he was jeering 
at her. 

“Now, what title will I be afther takin’ if they offer me one? My 
Lord Grace would sound well, I’m thinkin’. An’ isn’t that what 
they call the dukes, machree?” 

“Dear father, I’m sure you would not care for a title if you had 
one.” 

“Wouldn’t I, miss?” said Grace, chuckling with pleasure at her 
utter unconsciousness of the great fortune that was awaiting her. 
“ But let me tell you my story, alanna.” 

“Yes, father dear, you can tell it while I’m making your tea,” 
said Marcella, glad to find him in so pleasant a humor, and begin- 
ning to arrange the delft teacups. 

“My good little girl,” said the old man, patting her cheek, “you 
and I will never part, mavourneen, while the s6d is growin’ undher 


DISCOVERIES. 


31 


my feet and not over them. Afther that you can do as you plase, 
Marcella.” 

Marcella put an arm round his neck and returned his caress. 

“Mind, you have promised that,” she said, playfully; “and you 
are going to teach me to work and to dye the silks to please the fine 
ladies—” 

“ Oh, you foolish child; sure it’s you that’ll be wearin’ the silks. 
Aisy, now, an’ I’ll tell you the whole story.” 

It was a long time before Marcella could take it in. She thought 
her father was amusing himself with idle dreams of what might hap- 
pen, as he had always been rather fond of doing. It was clear the 
lady had been to see him in her absence, and had been particularly 
kind, and her friendliness had suggested the extravagant fancies in 
which the old man had since been indulging over his pipe. 

“ And supposin’,” he said, “ that Mrs. O’Kelly was to declare that 
she was your mother’s cousin. ‘An’ bein’ very rich, an’ without a 
child,’ says she, ‘ what can I do but take your daughter for my own? 
An’ I’ll put her in her mother’s shoes, ’says she, ‘an’ well becomes 
her to stand in them; for she’s a handsome girl,’ says Mrs. O’Kelly, 
4 an’ a credit to the genthry of Connaught.’ ” 

Marcella had got her sewing, and was listening half amused and 
half impatient to her father’s romancing. Such things as this did 
often happen in stories or in dreams. When she was younger, she 
had indulged in wild imaginings about her mother’s people, wonder- 
ing would they ever think of her, find her out, and encourage her. 
But she was too old in experience to expect any such miracle now. 
And it pained her to have such bright impossibilities flung into her 
thoughts. 

Seeing that none of his hints conveyed anything of the truth to 
her mind, Grace at last got provoked at her. 

4 4 Marcella,” he said,“ will you put down that sewin’ and listen to 
me? All that I have been sayin’ to you is gospel truth. An’ you’re 
to put on your bonnet and go over an’ have a talk about it all with 
your cousin, Mrs. O’Flaherty O’Kelly of Merrion Square, this evenin’. 
Only, mind, you and me are to keep together, Marcella, no matter 
what she says. I’m not goin’ to give up my child, an’ be lonely in 
my latter days, not to plase no fine madam of a Connaught genthry- 
woman, you can tell her.” 

But Marcella could not be induced to set out for Merrion Square 
that evening on such an errand. She begged to be allowed to put 
off the visit till morning, and Grace, confident in the safety of his 
cause, consented to humor her. 44 Let it be, then,” he said; “ maybe 
it’s as well. Y ou’ll want a few hours to think what you’d better say to 
her. These fine people have the whip-hand of such as you an’ me, 
for their edication’s in their favor, an’ they know what words to put 
into their speeches, and what words to leave out o’ them. There’s a 
dale o’ differ’ between dixonary words, though plain-talkin’ people 
would hardly believe it. An’ everything will depend on the bargain 
we can make wid her.” 

Still Marcella could not bring herself quite to believe in his story. 


32 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


His persistence forced her to conclude that there was some founda- 
tion for his romance, that Mrs. O’Kelly had spoken of some relation- 
ship she had discovered between herself and the weaver’s wife, and 
meant to be helpful to them on account of it; but further than this 
her common-sense would not allow her to go in crediting the prom- 
ise of a change of fortune, although her imagination struggled wild- 
ly to seize on all that was suggested and fly away with it. She lay 
awake all night, pondering the likelihoods of the case, and the ut- 
most she could admit was that Mrs. O’Kelly, who had already been 
so wonderfully friendly, was going to assist her towards honorably 
earning her bread in such a way that she could support her father 
in his fast declining years, and no longer need to dwell among the 
lowest population of the city. In all this lay much cause for joy, 
but, accustomed to disappointment and privation all her life, she did 
not know how to believe in it. The warning conveyed by her fa- 
ther’s words, “ Mind, we are to keep together — I’m not goin’ to give 
up my child,” seemed to hint at some difficulty in the way of the ful- 
filment of the rich lady’s intentions, a difficulty, perhaps, not to be 
overcome. Certainly she would never abandon her father — that was 
beyond question. Was it not chiefly for his sake that a change of 
fortune would be so acceptable to his daughter? It was hardly con- 
ceivable to her that any one could contemplate the idea of separating 
her from him, now when he needed her so much, and she would 
have dismissed the doubt as foolish, only that a long experience of 
living by the patronage of the better classes had taught her the rar- 
ity of their sympathy with the natural affections of the poor. The 
problem of what was meant and intended by the lady’s strange com- 
munication and promises, exaggerated as they might be by her fa- 
ther’s sanguine imagination, became at last too much for her patience 
and her incredulity, and she counted the hours till the moment might 
arrive when she could hear from Mrs. O’Kelly’s own lips what won- 
ders she proposed to work within the future of two humble lives. 

Her father was up early, and pressed her to eat a good breakfast, 
showing her many extraordinary little attentions, and the thought 
struck upon her heart with a pang that she was perhaps more pre- 
cious to him now, when good-fortune seemed about to drop upon 
her, than she had been when suffering hunger and hardship in order 
that he might be as comfortable as it was within her power to make 
him. Starting from the thought, however, as if it had been a crime, 
she found a thousand excuses for him. 

As much to relieve her own suspense as his impatience, she hur- 
ried early across the city upon her errand of fate. 

Mrs. O’Kelly was waiting for her with a feverish anxiety that more 
than equalled in intensity the eagerness of old Grace himself. As 
soon as the girl appeared, and they were alone in the library togeth- 
er, she took her by both hands and looked, with feeling that was al- 
most passion, in her eyes. 

“Is this my child, my adopted daughter?” she said, with a quaver 
of emotion and age in her voice. “ Marcella, I have a great aeal to 
say to you. I have been watching for you all morning, my dear.” 


AN IRISH CINDERELLA. 


.‘33 


CHAPTER Y. 

AN IRISH CINDERELLA. 

Marcella’s expectations were broken and scattered by such a 
greeting. The blood rushed to her face and fled away again instant- 
ly as she stammered, 

“ I do not understand. My father told me something, but I have 
not been able to believe it.” 

“But you must believe it, my dear. You are the only relative I 
have left in the world, and I had not a suspicion of your existence 
till I saw you standing here the first day you came, and my breath 
was taken away by your likeness to that portrait. You were look- 
ing up at it — ” 

“I remember; it made me think of my mother,” said the girl, 
“though I wondered why, for I do not recollect ever seeing her.” 

4 4 1 knew it could not be a chance resemblance, and it set me think- 
ing and inquiring. The thing was easy enough to trace once the 
question was started; and now you are going to be my own child; 
and I have been so lonely. I am ceasing to care for the world, and 
I want a daughter, Marcella — it was my sister’s name, her name 
whose face you have got. And now take off your bonnet and come 
with me, my child.” 

Marcella had listened in glad amazement. All the wild dreams of 
a future lifted above the sordid level upon which she had lived — 
dreams which she had kept aloof as enemies that could only rob her 
of what little contentment she possessed — rushed upon her now as 
friends claiming to be recognized. The moderate expectations she 
had dwelt upon during the last few hours were forgotten; a brilliant 
reality shone into her eyes and blinded her. She suddenly burst into 
tears. 

“ I do not wonder,” exclaimed the old lady, wiping her own eyes. 
“It has been too great a surprise. But I could not keep the secret 
any longer. I never could break the news of anything to any one 
in my life. And, besides, I was so impatient to take possession of 
you. Do not cry, my darling. You shall never return to that nas- 
ty den any more.” 

Marcella stilled her sobs and tried to speak. 

44 My father — ” she began. 

“ Oh, my dear, I will arrange with him. I have told him my in- 
tentions, and no doubt he will be glad to agree with them, once you 
are out of his hands. You have only to assert yourself a little — you 
are twenty-one, you have told me — and you will see that everything 
will come right.” 

3 


34 


MARCELLA. GRACE. 


Marcella had by this time overcome her agitation and regained 
her presence of mind. 

“You are very good,” she said, gratefully; “ I cannot find words 
to thank you for your goodness. But I can never consent to aban- 
don my father in his old age.” 

“ My dear, you need not use such terrible words. You shall not 
be asked to abandon him. We will make him as comfortable as he 
can be, and you shall go to see him as often as it is practicable. Of 
course you must feel, Marcella — ” 

“ I do feel,” said Marcella, gently, “ I feel it all, and that is why I 
will not desert him. He is old and failing in health, and he has 
loved me and cherished me all my life. I must be his nurse, his 
child, his hands, eyes, and staff as long as God leaves him to me. 
And so, dear friend, if instead of giving me all these brilliant things 
you offer, if you would merely help me to get work, put me in a way 
of being able to support him, I will bless you, and he will bless you 
every day we have to live.” 

“I don’t know that,” said Mrs. O’Kelly, beginning to get angry. 

‘ ‘ I don’t at all know that. I am sure the old gentleman will not be 
so easily satisfied.” 

“You mistake him, madam. He would never consent to part 
with me.” 

“Then he is a fool,” said Mrs. O’Kelly, “and I am sorely disap- 
pointed in you both! In that case I suppose you must be allowed 
to return to him.” 

And though the interview was prolonged considerably after this 
difficult point in the conversation had been reached, no better under- 
standing was arrived at, and Marcella returned to the Liberties with 
a much heavier heart than that with which she had left it, Mrs. 
O’Kelly having parted with her in an ecstasy of displeasure. 

On arriving home, however, strong in her consciousness that she 
had been true to her father and obeyed his warning to suffer no ar- 
rangement to be made that would part him from his daughter, she 
met with a very different reception from that which she had fairly 
earned, and had a right to expect. Old Grace’s anger at hearing that 
she had allowed their friend to quarrel with her was harder to bear 
than Mrs. O’Kelly’s feverish disappointment. 

He scolded her well for not exerting herself to make an advan- 
tageous bargain with the old lady, He had trusted her to do the 
business, believed in her willingness to be of use to him, placed all 
his affairs in her hands. He was only checked by the sight of Mar- 
cella’s fast-flowing tears. 

“ Oh, father!” she said, bitterly, “do not say that you would have 
sold me to her if she had only paid you well enough!” 

She stretched out her young hands imploringly as she cried to him, 
and the soft corner in his heart was reached. 

“I did not mean rightly that, my girl,” he said, “only that we 
oughtn’t to have quarrelled with her. But let’s say no more about 
it. I don’t know but that I might die if I couldn’t see your darlin’ 
face no more!” 


AN IRISH CINDERELLA. 


35 


And Marcella was comforted ; and having prayed Heaven to send 
her work from some quarter, that she might nourish this loving fa- 
ther in his declining days, she slept soundly upon her sorrows. 

But Mrs. O’Kelly was not so easily consoled. For many weeks 
she had so lived on the certainty of having Marcella for her own 
that she could not reconcile herself to disappointment. She blamed 
herself for her hasty temper, acknowledged that she had been unrea- 
sonable, and admitted that the girl’s determination not to give her 
father up only proved the sterling qualities of her heart. Before 
another day had passed she was more in love with Marcella than 
ever, and busy with schemes for ensnaring the girl into her keeping. 
She must manage to do it without alarming her filial devotion. She 
must gradually wean her from that dreadful old man, who at all 
cost must be kept down, concealed in the shadows of his original 
obscurity. At last she hit upon a plan which she thought must be 
successful, and it proved to be so. 

She made another pilgrimage to the Liberties,, the result of which 
was that the weaver permitted his daughter to go on a visit to Mrs. 
O’Kelly at Merrion Square. Grace was well pleased at the arrange- 
ment, considering that once his daughter had gained a footing in the 
old lady’s home and heart, he might ultimately hope to make his own 
terms. Mrs. O’Kelly was satisfied, thinking that Marcella, having 
tasted the sweets of young ladyhood, having been dressed, admired, 
accustomed to drawing-room life, would be found very amenable to 
reason, through fear of being thrown back into poverty and squalor. 
As for Marcella herself, seeing that both father and friend were con- 
tent, she felt free to give herself up to her young enjoyment of the 
hour, and to live like the heroine of a fairy romance. 

Not to shock the proprieties of any who might chance to look on 
in her home at the transformation of the weaver’s girl into Mrs. 
O’Kelly’s niece, as she called her (fondly imagining that the girl 
might have been the daughter of that sister of hers whose portrait 
she resembled, and whose name she bore), the lady was prudent in 
her arrangement of the affair. She left home for a few days, only, 
however, to stay at a hotel not far away, where Marcella met her 
and was transformed. No one could have imagined that the girl in 
sordid clothing who passed up the staircase of the hotel, and whom 
nobody could have sworn to have seen pass down again, had any one 
thought about so insignificant a matter, was one and the same with 
the elegant young lady who was found seated with Mrs. O’Kelly 
when the waiter served her lunch. After a few days’ shopping, walk- 
ing about the fashionable thoroughfares, and living at the hotel which 
seemed to the girl from the Liberties a palace of splendors, the two 
ladies were met one day at Westland How railway-station by Mrs. 
O’Kelly’s carriage, and were conducted home in state to Merrion 
Square. 

It was immediately known, and much talked of in her circle, that 
Mrs. O’Kelly had received on a visit a young relative who had been 
living abroad, and, having lost her parents and finished her educa- 
tion, was just in such an interesting position as to excite the old 


36 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


lady’s sympathies. She had gone to London to meet the girl on her 
way from Paris, and was making as much fuss about her as if she 
had been her actual child. 

On Mrs. O’Kelly’s next reception day her drawing-rooms were 
crowded with friends and acquaintances curious to behold Marcella, 
who sat making tea in a pretty, close-fitting dress of dull crimson 
cloth which set off her dark beauty to advantage. Miss O’Flaherty 
was the first to arrive and the last to take her leave, and made many 
bold attempts to cross-question the suddenly discovered niece as to 
her antecedents, all of which attacks, however, Mrs. O’Kelly adroitly 
foiled, enjoying intensely the discomfiture of her enemy. 

Marcella felt too timid in her new position to enter into prolonged 
conversation with any one, and took refuge in her task of tea-mak- 
ing, answering in few words when she was spoken to, and referring 
everything to her patroness. Yet her natural self-possession gave 
her so well-bred an air that nobody could call her shy. After the 
last visitor had departed, Mrs. O’Kelly congratulated her on the suc- 
cess of her first appearance in society. 

“You must gain more confidence in yourself, Marcella. You 
have less brogue than Julia O’Flaherty, and there was not a woman 
here to-day who can cross a floor as well as you do it. Just go out 
of the room, my dear, and come in again and up to my chair. You 
may laugh if you please, but it is a pretty art to move about a room 
with grace. It comes to you naturally, of course, with your nicely 
turned O’Kelly ankles and your graceful O’Kelly arms. Now, Julia 
O ’Flaherty’s feet are like the feet of a clothes-horse.” 

The old lady lay back complacently in her chair and stroked Mar- 
cella’s hands, which she had of late been bathing with perfumes and 
unguents to remove tl\e traces of toil from the shapely fingers. And 
she went on unfolding her ideas and intentions. 

“I have been asked several times to-day whether I did not intend 
presenting you at the drawing-room, but I have made up my mind 
that it would not do, as you have not yet consented to be altogether 
my daughter, Marcella. It would not be proper, if you think of 
afterwards returning to live in the Liberties, my darling. And yet 
you must see a little life while you are with me. I said to the in- 
quisitive people that, though you were rather young to go out, I did 
not know but that I might take you to the St. Patrick’s ball. I can 
manage to have you privately presented to his Excellency before the 
ball begins. You shall have a pretty dress, and you will see the 
dancing, which will be new to you. And after that we shall per- 
haps have a little dance ourselves.” 

Marcella expressed her delight at the prospect of so much pleas- 
ure, and thought of the long-past Patrick’s ball at which her mother 
had gayly danced, little dreaming of the dreary fate in store for her. 
How strange was life! Certainly but one month ago, if any one had 
told her that she, Marcella, would be going to a Patrick’s ball, she 
would have taken the prophet for a lunatic. 

And yet she was certainly going to the ball. A pretty dress was 
ordered, and Mrs. O’Kelly displayed to her the pearl ornaments 


THE PATRICK’S BALL. 


37 


which she herself had not worn for long, and which she believed 
Julia O’Flaherty already counted as her own. “But I am not sure 
that she shall have them,” said the old lady; “not if some people 
behave themselves nicely. They exactly suit a debutante, and it is a 
long time since poor Julia went to her first ball. They will go 
charmingly with this fleecy white dress of yours, which makes you 
look as if clothed in snow.” 



CHAPTER VI. 
the Patrick’s ball 


The eventful night arrived, and Mrs. O’Kelly, wearing her tabinet 
train, and followed by Marcella, white and fresh as a dew-drop in her 
glistening silk and pearls, set out in the O’Kelly brougham for Dub- 
lin Castle. The old castle-yard, witness of many a strange scene in 
Ireland’s history, was alive with carriages, cabs, and all manner of 
vehicles down to the jaunting-car which brought young men in their 
dancing-pumps, who had fallen back on the friendly jarvey, finding 
cabs were scarce — a scarcity not to be wondered at, seeing that in 
Dublin carriages are less plentiful than hack conveyances. 

While they awaited their turn to be set down, Mrs. O’Kelly re- 
lated anecdotes of the ancient splendors of Dublin Castle not derived 
from books, for she was no great reader, so much as from memory 
of what had been related to her by her mother. About a hundred 
years ago, or so, it might have been truly said that there were gay 
doings at Dublin Castle, when a legion of the nobility inhabited the 
magnificent old houses in and about the city, which are now either 
mouldering to decay, rifled of as much of their carvings and decora- 
tions as can be carried off, or turned into museums, public libraries, 
and asylums for the sick and unfortunate, where exquisitely adorned 
ceilings spread rich canopies over the hospital bed of pain, and stu- 
dents ascend the royal staircases at the top of which dukes in former 
days received their guests. 

Mrs. O’Kelly having, by special favor, been allowed to present her 
young charge to the Lord Lieutenant in another room, was soon 
seen leading her towards the entrance of St. Patrick’s Hall. 

“There is Julia O’Flalierty standing at the top of the stairs talk- 
ing to Bryan Kilmorey!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Kelly, in a low tone, 
more to herself than to Marcella, as they stood wedged in a corner. 
“Why does the girl wear pink with that beet-root color in her 
cheeks? How much she has got to say to Bryan, though she does 
sneer so at his politics! Dear me, if people would only think it their 
duty to keep moving on! Why does she not get into the ball-room? 
She will dance all night if she can get any one to dance with her, 
and she knows he never dances — ” 

Here a movement in the ascending clouds of silk and tulle and 


38 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


velvet, a stir which set jewels flashing and drew forth sighs of relief 
from the impatient, and little notes of low laughter from the joyous 
and sweet-tempered, swept Marcella and her chaperon some steps 
nearer to the door which was the goal of their desires, and Marcella 
was able to see Julia O’Flaherty and the gentleman to whom she 
was talking. He stood with his back to her now ; but something in 
the turn of the head was strangely familiar to Marcella. She held 
her breath for a moment, till the man, happening to turn, glanced 
towards her and looked her right in the face. Then she saw that 
the gentleman whom Mrs. O’Kelly called Bryan Kilmorey was the 
hero of her midnight adventure, the man whom she had sheltered 
from pursuit of the police, who had given her the ring, and whom 
she had last seen reading the proclamation of reward offered for the 
apprehension of the perpetrator of the murder which had been com- 
mitted on that eventful night. 

He looked her straight in the face as she advanced, and his glance 
lingered* on her with such an expression of interest that she thought 
herself recognized in spite of the change in her condition and ap- 
parel. Would he speak to her? she asked herself rapidly. What 
would he say to her? Would he allude to the secret he and she 
shared between them? Another movement of the crowd now car- 
ried them along the landing, and she stood by his side. 

“ Mrs. O’Kelly, will you not speak to me?” said the voice Marcella 
remembered well. “ What have I done that I should be cut dead?” 

“ Oh, is that you, Bryan? Who would expect to meet a person of 
your politics within the Castle walls, or such a non-frequenter of 
dances at a Patrick’s ball? It is so long since I have seen you in 
evening dress that I scarcely recognized you.” 

Bryan Kilmorey smiled an amused smile that became him well. 
The grave, stern face that had confronted Marcella in the moulder- 
ing-room of the old house in Weaver’s Square vanished, and for a 
moment she felt that she did not know this man. 

“You see even a vagabond like me sometimes wants to get a peep 
at respectable people,” he said. “Miss O’Flaherty has been kindly 
telling me who the people are who have outgrown me.” Then he 
added in a lower tone, “ I hope you will overlook my sins and short- 
comings so far as to introduce me to your niece. ” 

“ She is not my niece, and I don’t know about introducing you at 
present. She is coming with me now to walk round the rooms. 
Later in the evening I will think about it, unless I hear some bad 
stories of you in the mean time.” 

And passing him by with her chin elevated, the old lady swept on 
into the ball-room, followed by Marcella. 

“She is undeniably handsome,” said Miss O’Flaherty, looking 
after the girl; “but there is nothing in her. She is the most silent 
person I ever met. Has lived abroad, and has not a word to tell 
about any of the places she has seen.” 

Shortly afterwards, Bryan Kilmorey having left, Miss O’Flaherty, 
happy in the company of a wealthy unmarried colonel, moved into 
the ball-room and looked about eagerly for another glimpse of Mar- 


the Patrick’s ball. 


39 


cella. She was already in the centre of a little cluster of admirers. 
Her plea that she could not dance did not deprive her of their atten- 
tions. The appearance of a new face — and such a new face — had 
already made a sensation in a society where every one knows every 
one else, sometimes a little too well, and the freshest beauties are 
tired of all too soon. 

Kilmorey could not account for the peculiar effect which the 
sight of that particular countenance had wrought on him. The 
beautiful serious intelligence of the wide gray eyes struck him as 
something familiar. Where could he have seen her before? They 
said she had lived abroad, and he had not been on the Continent for 
two or three years. He fancied, too, that her eyes had met his with 
a friendly expression, that she looked as if she wished to speak to 
him. No; it must be only that that interested “asking” expression 
of the eyes was natural to her. He never could have seen her be- 
fore to-night. 

Nothing in her! Certainly her appearance must be a cheat if that 
were a just judgment. Silent she might be through unaccustomed- 
ness to the subjects of conversation which occupied the chatterers 
around her; but he felt a singular desire to speak to her. There 
was a particular quality of voice, a soft, rich note recurring and giv- 
ing to simple words a sort of pathetic sweetness which somehow, he 
felt sure, went with the expression of those brows and lips. Where 
he had heard such a voice he did not know, but the tones of it came 
to his imagination as he looked at her face. Could he have dreamed 
of this woman long ago, and only remembered the dream on behold- 
ing her? Nonsense! Or were these the symptoms of love at first 
sight? Equally absurd! for he was not a man who was much inter- 
ested by women, as a rule, and marrying was far from his thoughts. 

Later he succeeded in getting introduced to her, and in obtaining 
leave to take her to the refreshment-room for an ice. 

“ Trust me, I will not talk politics to her,” he said, smiling; “ and, 
pariah as I am, I will be careful not to let my shadow fall on her 
plate.” 

And Marcella found herself moving through the crowd with her 
hand on his arm. So keenly mindful was she of their former meet- 
ing, so full of consciousness of all that had passed between them be- 
fore, that she expected him to say, as soon as they were alone in the 
crowd, “ What is the meaning of this? How do I find you here? 
I thought you were a poor girl whom I should never see again, and 
with whom my secret would on that account be safe. Can I be sure 
you will guard it from all these people among whom it seems you 
live, as I do? And in which character have I met you masquerading 
— as the poverty-stricken girl in the Liberties, or as the relative of a 
wealthy gentlewoman? 

But lie said nothing of the kind. He only made some remarks 
about the antiquity of St. Patrick's Hall, and concerning the brilliant 
and tragic scenes that had succeeded each other within the walls of 
the Castle. He talked to her for some little time, hearing only 
enough of her voice to satisfy him that his expectation had made no 


40 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


mistake as to its quality; and then, having found her an ice and a 
chair, he made an effort to relieve his mind of the perplexity which 
had been increasing on him with every glance of her eyes and every 
murmur from her lips. 

“You have lived abroad, Miss O’Kelly. How do you find our 
damp island after more brilliant climes?” 

In an instant Marcella perceived that she had been mistaken, and 
that he did not recognize her, and she put herself on her guard. 
She would not disconcert him by revealing herself, although she 
could not make any effort to keep up Mrs. O’Kelly’s little fiction 
ab'out her foreign rearing. With people like Miss O’Flaherty she 
had suffered that matter to pass, allowing her ignorance of life 
abroad to be taken for stupidity, but here she must make bold to 
tell the honest truth. 

“I have never been out of Dublin, Mr. Kilmorey. I am only a 
poor relation,” she added, smiling; “but you must not tell that I 
have confessed it. Mrs. O’Kelly has been very kind, and I believe 
she wants to make the best of me. So I am supposed to have seen 
a great deal of the world — places on which I have never laid my 
eyes. Please don’t tell, for it would vex her.” 

“I will never tell,” he said; “the rack shall not extort it from 
me. But I am surprised at Mrs. O’Kelly for imagining you needed 
any such fictitious advantage. And it gives you a difficult part to 
play. How do you manage it?” 

“ I hold my tongue,” said Marcella, simply. “ I am very ignorant, 
but that is one thing I know how to do.” 

She emphasized the last words, thinking that in case he should a 
little later discover her identity, they might recur to his mind and 
give him confidence. 

“ It is an excellent talent,” he said, “ but one that can be too much 
cultivated. I am glad you have made an exception in my case. It 
strikes me that if you have never been out of Dublin, Miss O’Kelly, 
it is possible I may have seen you before. Your face, and even your 
voice, are strangely familiar to me— familiar although perfectly new. 
It seems rather as if I had known some one who bore a wonderful 
resemblance to you.” 

He stopped abruptly, seeing her cheek redden a little and then 
turn white. She felt a thrill of alarm lest he should be on the point 
of discovering her — for his sake rather than hers — not knowing how 
unpleasantly such discovery might affect him. At the same moment 
the paleness of her cheek and the anxious glance of her e) r es made 
her resemblance more striking to the face that was haunting him; 
and suddenly his riddle was read. 

“ She is like the girl who sheltered me,” he thought; “singularly 
like her both in face and voice. Strange I have noticed before that 
where a likeness exists between two faces the same resemblance is 
found in the voices. She was a noble-looking girl in the midst of 
her poor surroundings. Good heavens! it is the very same face.” 

Marcella had risen, and now lifted her eyes to his face. The same 
scene — that strange midnight scene — the open closet door, the moon- 


the Patrick’s ball. 


41 


light shining into the crazy old room, the shadow of a crime on the 
threshold, the echo of pursuit at the door— all were present in both 
their minds at the moment as she rose and stood before him, and 
their eyes met. 

“The very girl! Oh no, I must be losing my senses. I have 
startled her with my stare. The sordid gown, the pathetic face, are 
safe in the Liberties. This delicate maiden in her white frock never 
perhaps heard of such a quarter. But the likeness accounts for the 
curious impression she has made on me.” 

Marcella saw the change in his face, and knew that so far she had 
escaped detection. The power of circumstance was strong to con- 
ceal her identity. She breathed more freely, and a smile came back 
to her face. 

“ I have lived so quietly in Dublin,” she said, “ that I am perfect- 
ly new to everybody here. Thi^ js my very first appearance in so- 
ciety.” 

But here Mrs. O’Kelly’s voice was heard at her side. 

“I want my young lady. She is not accustomed to late hours 
and I am going to take her home. A young woman who is not out 
yet, and has still to learn to dance, has no excuse for staying late at 
a ball. Good-night, Bryan; I am not going to ask you to come to 
see me till you have given up your evil ways, you Fenian ! By-the- 
way, I hope you are very proud of the last piece of work of your 
party? Poor Gerald Ffont! it was within these very walls I met 
him last, and he then said a great deal to me about the wickedness 
of the people, which I think has been well proved by his murder.” 

A deep shade crossed Kilmorey’s face, but he made no attempt to 
reply to the old lady’s reproaches. 

“May I see you down-stairs and get you your cloak?” he said, 
gravely. 

i “No, thank you, I don’t think you need. A gentleman is wait- 
ing outside to look after us. Come, Marcella.” 

Marcella gave her hand frankly to Kilmorey with a friendly look, 
and followed her patroness, who lectured her all the way home about 
Bryan Kilmorey, rather for the satisfaction of saying some things 
that were in her mind against the man than because she thought it 
necessary for the girl to hear them. 

“I don’t wish you, my dear, to take too much notice of this Mr. 
Kilmorey. In fact, he is rather a thorn in my side, seeing that I 
have known his people always and was once very fond of himself. 
He was as nice and promising a lad as ever I knew till he began to 
take an interest in the Fenian question. That is a good many years 
ago now, for Bryan is thirty years of age; but a University training 
at Trinity, and subsequent experiences, have not, evidently, trained 
the sympathy with Fenianism out of him. He has lately been sid- 
ing with the low malcontents in the country in a manner which has 
turned all my affection for him to bitterness. How his poor mother 
bears it I am sure I do not know, for I seldom see her now, as she 
never shows her face in society, being an invalid, doubtless in con- 
sequence of the wrong-headed ness of her son. What brought him 


42 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


to the hall to-night I cannot think, as he has quite dropped out of 
society through his extraordinary proclivities. And such a promis- 
ing young man as that was, full of brave aspirations and noble ideas 
on every subject; the sort of young man who would have gone to 
battle to free slaves, or would have kept that bridge long ago like 
the three what-do-you-call-thems in the history of Greece — would 
have led a forlorn-hope anywhere if you only gave him a good enough 
cause. And now to have mixed himself up with low people, to have 
reduced his rents so far as to cast reproach on the old friends of his 
family, to beggar himself in the effort to keep the peasants from 
emigrating, to have lost all ideas of the duties of his caste — ” 

Here Mrs. O’Kelly’s brougham pulled up suddenly at her door, 
and the stream of her eloquence received a temporary check. 


CHAPTER VII. 

SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 

Murphy opened the hall door with a sleepy and aggrieved coun- 
tenance. 

“There’s a woman here with a message for you, ma’am, ’s been 
sittin’ in the hall these two hours. I couldn’t have put her out, bar- 
rin’ I called in the policeman ; an’ I didn’t rightly like to do that, as 
she looks a dacent sort of body.” 

A messenger at one o’clock in the morning! Marcella knew by 
instinct that the message was for her. 

Mrs. O’Kelly divined the same, and sent Murphy away, and pushed 
her debutante into the library while she spoke to the woman, who 
had risen from the hall chair and fixed her eyes on Marcella, as the 
girl quickly reappeared. 

“Mrs. O’Kelly, I know this woman. Something is wrong with 
my father.” 

“Your father is dying,” said the woman, “and he’s callin’ for 
you. He’s been ill these four days, and wouldn’t tell us where to 
look for you. I knowed that grandeur couldn’t change ye that 
much, Marcella, but what you’d want to see him. I ask your par- 
don, miss, but I don’t know how to speak to you rightly in that 
beautiful dress.” 

Marcella was already putting off her necklace and bracelets, and 
throwing them on the hall table. 

“Get a cab at once,” she said, “and I will change my dress in a 
moment and go with you. Oh, my poor father, why was I so selfish 
as to leave you?” 

“Marcella, are you quite mad? After all the trouble I have tak- 
eu to conceal your connection with low people, to think of running 
out like this to them in the middle of the night! You shall not do 
it. These people always exaggerate. It will be quite time enough 


SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 


43 


in the morning, when you go out naturally as a young lady should, 
and no one need know where you are going.” 

But Marcella had not waited to hear the last of these rapidly ut- 
tered words, but had fled to the top of the house, and was down 
again, clothed in a dark dress, before her patroness had time to real- 
ize what she was doing. 

“Marcella, I am shocked and disappointed in you. If you quit 
this house at such an hour, remember you never come back to it.” 

“ Oh, why did I leave him? why did I ever leave him?” moaned 
the girl, unfastening the door with her trembling hands. “ Come, 
Mrs. Casey. Oh, Mrs. O’Kelly, don’t be angry. I am not ungrate- 
ful — but my father — ” 

The humble messenger stood up and courtesied to the angry lady, 
and the next moment Mrs. O’Kelly stood alone in the hall in a pas- 
sion of outraged and injured dignity. 

In the mean time Marcella, all her finery vanished, was flying 
through the streets at a pace with which her companion could hard- 
ly keep up. There were no cabs to be seen, and if there had been 
she had no money. The ill-kept, ill-lighted streets of the Liberties 
had never looked so dismal as now, their squalor and misery seemed 
more appalling to Marcella than they had ever seemed before. Ar- 
rived at the old house at last, she flung herself on her knees at her 
father's bedside. 

“Whisht, Marcella! Sure I wouldn’t have sent for you, darlin’, 
only I haven’t many hours to live. Whin I first took sick, I wanted 
you, but I said, says I, you mustn’t be intherferin’ wid the crature’s 
good-fortune, Michael Grace. Sure who will look aftlier her when 
you’re gone if you anger the lady that’s good to her? An’ when I 
felt I was goin’ to die, I seen everything so different from what it 
was before. Sure your mother was a lady, Marcella, and the Lord 
made you to live among ladies, and he sent one of them afther you 
to take you to your natural place. An’ what would the quality be 
doin’ wid me in their way — nothin’ but a big blundherin’ crature 
that would be disgracin’ you? And sure, my darlin’, I’m goin’ to 
heaven to get a sight o’ your mother, though God knows it’s the 
angels she’ll be keepin’ company with, an’ not with the likes o’ me. 
Well, well, sure Himself will find a little place for Michael some- 
where, for they say heaven’s very big, and there’s a corner there for 
everybody that the Lord Jesus took thought of when he died. And 
more betoken, Father O’Reilly tould me yesterday that the Lord 
was thinkin’ o’ me on the cross when he died. Did you ever hear 
the like o’ that, Marcella? Of coorse I ought ha’ knowed it, but it 
niver came home to me rightly the way it does now. I seem to see 
a meanin’ in it an’ a raison for it; for sure what ’d become of me, a 
sthranger, pushed suddenly out into the other world, if I hadn’t a 
friend there to be providin’ for me?” 

The dispensary doctor shook his head when questioned by Mar- 
cella. The old man was older than she had thought, and had long 
been breaking up. He was dying now as fast as he could of rapid 
disease of the heart. 


44 


MARCELLA. GRACE. 


Days passed over, and Marcella, completely devoted to the task of 
soothing his last hours, thought of nothing, remembered nothing but 
the fast-fleeting presence of this affectionate father, the only and 
tender, if rugged companion of her childhood and youth, the one 
creature to whom she really belonged in the world. No message 
came from Mrs. O’Kelly, and Marcella was obliged to the kindness 
of her poor neighbors for such little assistance as she could not do 
without. At last the supreme moment came, and he expired in her 
arms, blessing her. 

And the desolate girl, having followed him to the grave, sat in the 
dreary old house, dismayed and alone. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 

Sitting forlorn in the old house, alone in the world, Marcella 
looked back amazed over the events of the last few months of her 
life, and felt as if all living was a dream, and nothing real which 
humanity can touch or behold. Up to the night when she had shel- 
tered and protected the stranger whom she now knew as Bryan 
Kilmorey, her existence had in its hard monotony been real enough, 
but the many strange vicissitudes through which she had passed 
since then, looked now to her memory like the flying phantasma- 
goria of clouds over the head. The stern fact remained that her 
father was gone, and that she could have neither care for, nor pro- 
tection from him more in this world. 

She returned at once to her old life of sewing from morning till 
night to keep body and soul together, and as she stitched in solitude 
her thoughts often went back to Mrs. O’Kelly, and she wondered 
with a sore heart why rich people were so whimsical and strange, 
so kind one moment, so cruel the next. She had believed that Mrs. 
O’Kelly had loved her, and yet she had allowed her to face her ter- 
rible sorrow alone, to struggle with poverty at such a moment, to 
nurse her sick and bury her dead without help or sympathy from a 
friend. What a little part of the generosity that had dressed her so 
finely, amused her, taken her about the world during those unreal 
weeks, would have sufficed to have eased and soothed the suffering 
of the last ten days! It would have been better she had never known 
her, thought Marcella, in tears; better she had stayed by her father 
during those last weeks of his life; more wholesome for herself if 
she had never tasted the sweets of refined living and of gentle com- 
pany. The only good she had gained, thought the girl, as she plied 
her needle with tear-dimmed eyes, was that she had been allowed to 
see her hero again, had heard something of his life, had learned his 
name, and had been honored by the clasp of his hand. It seemed 
to her now, looking back on that enchanted season of enjoyment, 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


45 


that this wonderful episode in her life had been permitted to her 
solely for the sake of that one half-hour’s conversation with Bryan 
Kilmorey at the ball. 

Why such a strange conviction should cling to her she did not 
know, only she felt inexplicably that she would yet have some fur- 
ther means of serving him, that she was to have something more to 
do with him, or for him, before she died. She was too young to 
know the folly of relying on presentiments, though presentiments do 
sometimes come true. 

She was startled out of her long retrospect by the sound of an ap- 
proaching foot on the stair, followed by a summons on her door. 
Rising quickly to open, she almost expected to see Kilmorey again 
on the threshold, come to tell her what further she could do for him. 
But it was not Kilmorey who stood before her expectant eyes, only 
meek old Father Daly from Distresna. 

Marcella had never beheld him before, but seeing that he was a 
priest, she, as a matter of course, invited him to enter and sit down. 

He laid his hat on the corner of the old loom, looked at her kindly 
and critically for a moment, and then extending his blunt, honest, 
feeling old hand (for hands express as much as voices), said, 

‘ ‘ Shake hands with me, my dear. There is no one to introduce 
us ; but as you and I are bound to have much to do with each other 
through life, we will begin to be friends at once, if you have no ob- 
jection.” 

Marcella thought for an instant that the strange priest’s mind was 
a little astray, or that he had mistaken her for some one else. But 
he soon corrected that impression. 

“Your name is Marcella Grace,” he said, “and you have lately 
suffered a great loss. Nay, my dear, God wipes the tears from all 
eyes; and sure I am you have already wept more than is good for 
you. Now, how am I to talk to you if you go on crying this 
way?” 

Marcella, whose flesh was weak from scant food and sleep, but 
whose spirit was willing, righted herself at once and asked what her 
visitor wanted of her. 

“ Sit down, my dear child, and listen to me, for I have a good deal 
to say. Some time ago you had intercourse with a lady, a cousin of 
your mother’s — Mrs. O’Kelly, my friend, my poor friend — God be 
merciful to her !” 

“ Sir, you do not mean — ” 

“That she also is dead? But I do, my dear. Heaven has strange 
ways of' dealing with us, and sometimes troubles come oddly in 
bunches. ‘It never rains but it pours,’ says the old proverb; but 
after God’s rain there is always some harvest for the soul. Now, 
my dear, I will allow you to cry for five minutes, but you must not 
be longer, for I have a great deal to say and to do. My poor old 
friend had a true affection for you. She told me to tell you she was 
sorry she had been hasty with you. She died with sorrow in her 
heart for your trouble, but she did what she could to make amends, 
so she did. ” 


46 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“ And I have been thinking her changeable and unkind,” said Mar- 
cella, trying to control her grief. “ But what— how — ” 

‘ ‘ I will tell you all about it. Some time ago we had a bit of a mis- 
understanding, my poor friend and I, about rents down in the coun- 
try, and about making her will, and because I was displeased about 
one I would give her no advice about the other, God forgive me! 
and I went away in a huff — ” 

Here Father Daly paused and remembered the old lady’s angry 
cry, “ Don’t come back here until I send for you!” but he said noth- 
ing of that. 

“About a fortnight ago,” he went on, “I got a telegram in the 
country asking me to come in a hurry to comfort my poor old friend. 
She had had a stroke of paralysis, and she had only a few conscious 
hours before she died. Fortunately, and thanks be to God, she was 
able to make use of her time.” 

Marcella listened in silence. All this conveyed to her but one 
thought. Her good friend had died without receiving the grateful 
thanks which were her due, and meanwhile the recipient of her boun- 
ty had thought of her with a reproachful heart. How can such pite- 
ous misunderstandings ever be put straight when death and eternity 
have interposed between soul and soul? 

“She told me about you, my dear, and how strangely you had 
come across her, as if Providence had sent you. She owned she was 
wrong in being displeased at you for hurrying away to your fa- 
ther, and she would have followed you next day only ’twas then 
the hand of God w T as laid on her. Poor soul! she blamed herself 
right and left, as we all will have to do then, my dear, and may as 
well begin now. And the end of it was she left you her love ; and 
along with it she has bequeathed you all she was possessed of in the 
world.” 

“I prize the message dearly,” said Marcella; “it puts me right 
again. I thought I had lost a friend, and now I have gained one 
again, though so far away as heaven. Thank you with all my heart, 
father, for coming to bring me that word.” 

Father Daly looked at her inquiringly. 

“ I don’t think I have made you understand me,” he said. “You 
are now Mrs. O’Kelly’s heiress, my child, with houses and lands, and 
an income of two or three thousand a year.” 

Marcella colored, and threw back her head, and looked at Father 
Daly with a puzzled expression, 

“ Have I heard you rightly?” she said, in a low voice. “Do you 
not make some strange mistake? Oh, sir, don’t you see that it is so 
very, very unlikely?” 

“Nothing is so likely to happen as the unexpected,” said Father 
Daly, buttoning his coat, “and this is not so unlikely, after all. You 
are her nearest of kin, in the first place, and she was very fond of 
you in the second. At all events, I can assure you that there is no 
kind of mistake. And now about practical business. You can laugh, 
and cry, and wonder about it all when you have time, but in the mean 
time you must have somebody to listen to you. It will not suit you 


OUT OF THE DEPTHS. 


47 


to continue longer in this house, my dear, than is absolutely necessary. 
I have thought about all that, and I have made some arrangements. 
As the Lady of Distresna you must have proper surroundings at 
once, and there is no use in taking the world into our confidence 
unnecessarily as to where you have hitherto had your home. In 
all humility we must always remember it ourselves ; but it was Mrs. 
O’Kelly’s wish that nothing should be said to take from under your 
feet the little platform of worldly respectability on which she had 
been at pains to set you up. Not that you must ever deny the truth, 
but the world has no claim on our voluntary confidence. 

“This being so,” continued Father Daly, brushing his hat with his 
coat-sleeve, and looking at the crown of it intently, so that he might 
not intrude upon Marcella’s natural emotions at such a moment, “ I 
have taken some steps for your comfort. Here is money which you 
will want to wind up your affairs — your own money, mind ; nobody 
else’s — and if you are ready to leave this to-morrow, I will take you 
to a place where, I will answer for it, you will soon not be sorry to 
have gone. Some clothes, and all that, can be sent after you.” 

“Where?” asked Marcella. 

“Well, I am going to take you to a friend of mine in the country 
for the present. I thought you would not care to go to Merrion 
Square just now, and Crane’s Castle would give you but a cold wel- 
come unless it got longer notice. With Mrs. Kilmorey you will be 
happy and safe until such other arrangements as you please can be 
made for you.” 

“ Mrs. Kilmorey!” murmured Marcella, again with the feeling that 
she could not have rightly heard or understood. 

“ She is a dear friend of mine, and she was a friend of Mrs. O’Kelly 
till — well, the world parted them. She lives in a very retired spot 
and is an invalid, and a great deal alone, as her only son is necessa- 
rily much away from her. I wrote to her in haste, telling her the 
state of the case, and this morning I received her reply. She will 
expect us to arrive to-morrow evening.” 

Having given her a few more detailed instructions, Father Daly 
went away and left Mrs. O’Kelly’s heiress to realize this newest and 
most extraordinary of all the changes in her life. 

Her friend as well as her father gone from this world, and in their 
place fortune, ladyhood, position in life allotted to her. 

Her first impulse when alone was to fall upon her knees and wres- 
tle with the great wonder, and the strange alternations of pain and 
joy that now, after her first bewilderment had passed away, seized 
and shook her. With her hands clasped above her head she remain- 
ed long in the attitude of supplication, without power to put her 
thoughts into words, hardly knowing what she asked to receive, or 
to be saved from, only keenly conscious that God was aware of it 
all, and would overshadow her with the wings of his care. Then 
rising to her feet, and standing in the middle of the familiar room, 
she looked round on the poverty-stricken hearth, the old loom, the 
rotting timbers, and said to herself that all this evidence of her for- 
mer life was passing away from her, and after to-morrow would be 


48 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


seen no more. Only this morning .she had feared that she would 
never be able to escape from its sordid, haunted forlornness to cleaner 
and less dreary, even if almost as poor, surroundings, and now it 
seemed to her she could not leave it without a pang. The old crazy 
sticks and stained walls were all that remained to connect her with 
whatever love she had known in her life, and in leaving them for- 
ever she seemed to cut herself adrift from those she had forever 
lost. 

Her experiences till now had inclined her to fear rather than to 
hope, and yet as her thoughts, after an interval of sorrowful looking 
back, sprang on to to-morrow, the eagerness of youth leaped up in 
her, and she smiled radiantly through her tears. It was true, as that 
she held what seemed to her a small dowry of golden sovereigns in 
her hand, that she was henceforth to have money, freedom, nice liv- 
ing, gentle and genial companionship, power to relieve those who suf- 
fered still as she herself was now to suffer no more. She was to go 
forth into a beautiful world, with flowers on her breast and a golden 
wand in her hand— and then her wide vision of the splendors and 
delights of a possible happiness gradually narrowed down to one daz- 
zling point, as she remembered that to-morrow she was — strange to 
tell, and hard to realize — to be a guest in Bryan Kilmorey’s mother’s 
home. 

With the impulse of youth to believe unflinchingly in what it has 
already accepted by instinct as noble, she had never paid the slight- 
est heed to Mrs. O’Kelly’s denunciations of this man, preferring to 
think that he was right, and his former friend in the wrong, having 
from the first adopted his cause, whatever it might be, as the just 
one. Mrs. O’Kelly had described his mother as crushed and under- 
mined in health by the wrong-headedness of her son. This Marcella 
had never believed — but now she would see. Happily she would 
presently see. 

Then she began to make her arrangements for the final break with 
her past. With characteristic fidelity to what she had undertaken, 
she finished the piece of sewing on which she had been engaged 
when interrupted by Father Daly with his wonderful news, and took 
it to the shop which had employed her. Strange it was to her now, 
the old familiar counting out of pence into her hand — her hand, 
which was to have henceforth the spending of sovereigns. Coming 
out of the shop she gave the price of her tear-stained labor to the 
first poor-looking creature she met, and passed on hugging the bless- 
ing which she had bought with the alms. Next she made some pur- 
chases, a few necessary articles for herself, and various little presents 
for humble friends who had been kind to her in her trouble. She 
paid her small debts, and said her last good-bys, telling all those 
poor-looking creatures whom she visited that friends having sent 
for her, she was leaving Dublin, but giving no clew to her future 
whereabouts. Nobody was surprised. Marcella had grand rela- 
tions, and, now that her father was gone, of course they would look 
after her. The neighbors promised to pray for her, wished her God- 
speed, and she was gone. 


THE SHADOW OF A CRIME. 


49 


She met Father Daly at the railway-station, and at the ringing of 
the bell for the train, and the shriek from the engine, the curtain 
finally fell on the early struggles of Marcella Grace, to rise again 
shortly on the joys and tribulations of the heiress of Distresna. 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE SHADOW OF A CRIME. 

Bryan Kilmorey sat in his chambers in Dublin turning over an 
anonymous letter in his hands, and pondering its contents. It told 
him that the police were watching him, that he was suspected of 
complicity in a recent crime, that a strong case was being made out 
against him, and that he had better fly the country while yet he had 
time. 

“A precious document!” he exclaimed. “I shall not take the 
slightest notice of it;” and then, tearing it into shreds, he walked to 
the window and stood looking out, without seeing the things at 
which he gazed. 

His thoughts were busy with the events of that night when he had 
fled through the streets of the Liberties of Dublin like a criminal 
from justice. The horror of the scene he had escaped from lay in 
dismal colors before the eye of his mind. A fellow-creature whose 
steps had been dogged from street to street, done to death without a 
moment’s warning, a man whose hand he had often touched, the 
sound of whose voice he knew, lying on the pavement in his blood 
while his murderers escaped. He heard the cry of the police and 
their footsteps following, as, overwhelmed with dismay at his posi- 
tion, he, Bryan Kilmorey, did what he had never done before in his 
life — ran from pursuit, and sought for a hiding-place and sanctuary. 
His brow burned as he remembered all that had occurred, and then, 
having mastered a sort of silent passion of shame and regret, he 
turned abruptly from the window, took up his hat, and left the 
house, as if he would escape from his painful thoughts by movement 
through the open air. 

Passing across Merrion Square, he looked up at a house from 
which he had only a few days ago followed the funeral of an old 
friend, one whonAe had always looked on as a friend in spite of the 
sharp reproaches with which she had of late kept him in mind that 
she held him in disgrace on account of his politics. And what were 
those politics which so dishonored him? he asked himself. He be- 
lieved that Ireland might be made, and ought to be made, by her 
own exertions, a peaceful and contented country; that education 
should be encouraged in, and famine should be banished fitom the 
land. That was about the whole in a nutshell. Probably his friend, 
an emigrant now herself to that new world where no rents are paid 
and unbought leases are held in perpetuity, was wiser this moment 
4 


50 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


than she had been a month ago, and would willingly exonerate him 
from much with which she had not scrupled to charge him. How 
quickly she had taken her departure, poor old lady, and what had 
become of that strangely interesting girl, the young relative who had 
appeared under her chaperonage just before her death? As this 
girl’s face and voice came back to him, he remembered that it was 
not only her own peculiar attractions which had so fascinated him, 
but also her curious resemblance to that other girl who was so asso- 
ciated with his adventure on one fatal night, the events of which 
had just now been so present to his mind, and to which his thoughts 
still so easily went back. 

The sordid aspect of the rooms, the poor garb of his protectress 
herself came before him again, and he reproached himself for not 
having tried to do something to better the condition of those under 
whose roof he had been sheltered from a real misfortune. True, 
there might be some danger to him in returning to the spot, in at all 
connecting himself with the people, whoever they might be, who 
lived in that house. If he were in reality watched by the police, as 
he had been informed, it might tell against him were he observed to 
hold any intercourse with those who had harbored him, who might 
be suspected of having screened him from justice on that occasion. 
Yet in a matter of this kind it were cowardice to be over-prudent. 
He had already discovered that the owner of the house was a weaver 
of poplin, poor and old; might he not benefit him a little if only by 
buying his manufacture? 

The man he had never seen; the girl, he was assured, would keep 
his secret. He felt a sudden and strong desire to do something at 
once towards discharging his debt. In these troubled times a man 
like him could not be sure of the circumstances in which he might 
find himself to-morrow. Better to do at once whatever seemed ur- 
gent to be done. Under the influence of this impulse he directed his 
steps towards the Liberties, and took his way through some of the 
most historic parts of Dublin. Here, along these quays where the 
westering sun turns even the mud of the Liffey into liquid gold, 
makes the dome of the Four Courts redden in the clouds, and fires 
the spars of such shipping as clusters between the shadowed spans 
of the bridges, ran the “rebels” of ’98, with caps of pitch ablaze on 
their heads, to plunge madly into the waters for an ending of their 
torment. About this spot were enacted the last pathetic scenes in 
the short life of the enthusiastic boy Robert Emmet. Along this 
route he strode, sword in hand, leading on the ragged regiment which 
was all that appeared in the flesh of the imaginary armies with which 
he had expected to win Ireland for the Irish; and there his gibbet 
stood, the scaffold from which his heroic young soul escaped to where 
there are neither famines, nor oppressions, nor possible mistakes or 
miscalculations for the ardent and freedom-loving spirit to fall into. 
In yoncfer house Lord Edward Fitzgerald was trapped, wounded, and 
caught, to be dragged to Kilmainham prison to die of his wounds. 
On this street-way Lord Kilwarden met the untimely fate that broke 
Emmet’s heart. And so on through many a thoroughfare till the 


THE SHADOW OF A CRIME. 


51 


causeways grew narrower and dirtier, till “ Patrick’s ” lowered above 
the pedestrian’s head, and the big bell boomed the hour over squalid 
houses and unwholesome alleys. Time was when the passer-by 
might have turned into the great cathedral to say a prayer for the 
living and the dead; but living and dead may now lack a neighbor’s 
suffrage long ere Patrick’s threshold can be crossed thus unceremo- 
niously by a knee that would bend and a soul that would pray. And 
this way lies Weaver’s Square. 

Kilmorey glanced keenly around him as he entered it. Yes, that 
was the house, that large one at the end of the street. It looked dark, 
desolate, deserted. Could it be possible that any one lived within 
those walls? He spoke to a boy who was passing, and asked for in- 
formation of the inhabitants of that particular house. 

“ There’s nobody in it now, sir. The ould man is dead, sir; and 
his daughter’s gone away. The people do say, sir, that she’s gone 
away clane out of Dublin to her friends.” 

“Dead! gone! Gone to her friends. I hope she has friends. I 
trust she has real friends,” was Kilmorey’s thought; and then he 
reproached himself for not having sooner made an effort to know 
something about her. Prudence told him, however, that things were 
better as they were. The less the girl knew of the man she had 
rescued, the safer, perhaps, for him. Let all good angels guard her 
in that spot of earth, wherever it might be, whither the exigencies 
of fate had driven her, with that shadow of habitual endurance on 
her earnest brow, and light of ready pity in her tender and sympa- 
thetic eyes. As he turned away from the street, the thoughts 
sprung from his interest in the girl, as an individual, gave place again 
to others which touched on the question of his own personal safety. 

“ Should any one have watched me into the house,” he thought, 
“and with such testimony be ready to help to establish a possible 
case against me, what would be the effect in the matter of the girl’s 
sudden disappearance? Is there not a likelihood that I should be 
suspected of removing her?” 

And as he walked on, his mind ran on the curious tricks of fate, 
to speak in worldly phrase, the strange dives and twists that circum- 
stances will make at times, as if precisely for the purpose of forcing 
white to look black, and black to look white. Unfortunately we are 
not always in the mood to see in these the arrangements of Provi- 
dence, able to round the crooked zigzags of our way into fair curves 
and beautify barren wastes of travel to our sore feet. And it seemed 
to him now, that if, out of the very threads he had himself spun, of 
loyal purpose, a uet was being woven around him to his destruction, 
then the consequences of the freaks of accidental circumstance would 
certainly be hard upon him. 


52 


MARCELLA GRACE. 




CHAPTER X. 

HOMEWARD. 

Kilmorey had just returned from London, where he had gone to 
try to stir up a little interest among members of Parliament on the 
subject of the Purchase Clauses of the Land Act, which were in 
6uch a state that all sale was blocked while some of his tenants were 
eager to buy what he would be as well pleased to sell. Finding 
even greater difficulty than he anticipated, he had returned sooner 
than he intended, and so had probably crossed in the Channel his 
letters from home, which as yet had not followed him here. The 
result of this morning’s reflections, suggested by the receipt of that 
anonymous letter which, contemptible as he held it, yet had left its 
sting behind it, as such things do, was, that he made up his mind to 
run down into the country at once, see his mother, and arrange his 
affairs with a view to a possible surprise. In these days there was 
no knowing when a man might be lifted out of the midst of his af- 
fairs, at any amount of inconvenience to himself and others depend- 
ent on him, to be practically annihilated at a moment’s notice, and 
for an indefinite length of time. He was ready to acknowledge that 
this might be all very well if the individual so lifted were a mis- 
chievous individual; but he did not think that he, Kilmorey, would, 
in the event of his being so pounced upon and done away with, prove 
to be the right man in the right place. 

The next morning he took the train as far as the train would carry 
him westward in the direction in which he wanted to go, and about 
the middle of the summer day, mounted on horseback, to travel the 
fifty miles which still separated him from his little Connaught king- 
dom. 

Whoever knows Ireland well knows the beauty of the land through 
which he passed, while the sun traversed the wide horizon from east 
to west over his head, taking the light from the lakes and giving it 
to the hills, stealing the colors from the mountain-tops to spread 
them across the moor, and ever reversing the picture again as the 
breeze stirred and the clouds shifted. The beauty of this island of 
ours is the beauty of light and color in incessant change. The val- 
ley has walls dark and blue as sapphire, and is itself a reservoir of 
iridescent glory, but while we look, the walls have become pure gold, 
and the hollow land between has mysteriously yawned, deepened, 
and been flooded with gloom. The elfish mists that sit on the pur- 
ple peaks and wind themselves about the gray crags descend, before 
we have time to determine their shapes, to lie along the edge of the 
dark pool, and creep among the flickering reeds, and transform the 


HOMEWAED. 


53 


wide brown lines of the monotonous bog into the paths of a shim- 
mering supernatural dominion. We have one moment a royal rich- 
ness of ambers, purples, crimsons, and golds of every variety of lus- 
tre, all spread at our feet like Aladdin’s treasures, and the next we 
are swathed in a winding-sheet of grewsome gray, and move through 
a world, poor, cold, wind-swept, and rain-beaten. Even in the un- 
broken weather of a summer day, our aerial changes are so swift and 
ceaseless that the land we move through seems alive with motion; 
what was quite near is suddenly far away, and what was distant 
comes as rapidly smiling towards us. So much of our landscape 
is made up of lakes, rivers, bays, linked together by wet, verdant 
vegetation, and so constantly does each moss-girdled lakelet, pool 
with torn fringes, and strip of widening and narrowing stream, 
snatch at the clouds above and hold a piece of the blue sky forever 
in its breast, that half our earth is literally heaven, and we often 
seem to walk through a sort of mid-air region, with moonrise and 
sunset, not only over our heads but under our feet. 

No wonder, if in a country so overridden by freakish mists and 
deceiving waters, so eternally the highway for processional splendors 
of shifting color, so hopelessly the grim sport of funereal clouds and 
shadows, we encounter at every turn wraiths and fairies, ghosts and 
elves, that peer at us out of the lakes and the caves„and come down 
to us from the hollow places of the mountains. 

Natural enough, if we see them sitting on the edge of the pool 
when the blue shadows of dusk are beginning to turn brown, or hear 
their bells ringing for evening as the sun goes down in fire behind 
the thorn-trees, or meet them veiled and pensive, gliding across the 
lapwing’s track on the dun moor, or descry the spears of their lances 
glinting under the moon at the back of the river-side thicket. 

Small blame to us if we suspect them of creeping through the key- 
holes to sit on our hearths while we are asleep, or waken early to 
hear the horns of the elfin hunt blowing, echoing thinly over the 
dawn-impurpled crests of the hills! 

Bryan Kilmorey loved every huge bowlder that hung out of the 
mountain over the path he travelled, every diamond-like splash of 
water that blinked at him as he passed by bog and over moor, every 
forlorn tree that seemed to mourn a defunct forest at some desolate 
angle of the high-road. The whole company of elves and fairies 
were as well known and as dear to him as the flag-lilies in the river, 
the fluttering pennons of the reeds, and the grotesque shapes of the 
bog-wood just unearthed out of the reeking peat-moss. 

Sometimes, as he had poked about in the gloaming at home, while 
the plover wailed and the bat flapped across his eyes, and it seemed 
quite rational to expect to see some rarefied creature with a certain 
semblance to humanity step out of the clefts in the rock, or from 
under the screen of the waving bracken, he had told himself that if 
Irish waste lands were all drained, and Irish rents were low, the de- 
lightful eldritch population of these lovely but famine-breeding wil- 
dernesses might arise and emigrate en masse to some now weirder 
region, some spot of earth where mists still exhaled from wet mosses 


54 


MARCELLA. GRACE. 


growing nothing but brilliant weeds, and their fumes still got into 
the vision-seeing brains of hungry and languishing humanity. 

At the first sprinkling of corn, wine, and oil, no doubt the fairies 
would mount their phookas and disappear; and though their land- 
lord (for he accounted himself such to those of the tribe who lived 
in his brackens, or under or over his barren gray rocks) would 
grieve for the elfin exodus, yet willingly would he unbar the gates 
of the morn that let those go forth who require no food but the dew- 
drops, to make way for the footstep of the sower and the reaper, for 
the hand that would plant the potato where the nightshade had spread, 
and make two blades of grass to spring where only one had hitherto 
grown. But at present the parting between landlord and elfin ten- 
ant did not seem imminent, for as yet the landscape still reeked with 
water, and the children of humanity were not fed. 

Towards the end of his journey he passed through all the won- 
ders of sunset while threading one picturesque valley after another, 
crossing gorges in the mountains, and skirting along a glen here and 
open moorland there. Like a guiltless soul through the ordeal of 
fire, he passed amid flames that threatened to consume the green 
vales and melt the mountains to their base. First it was a golden 
glory which fell from the heavens, blinding bright, and then amber 
became rose, and rose became crimson red, till the fires behind the 
darkling mountains burned themselves out, and paler tints came out 
to cool the burning earth and air. 

Just as the cooler purple began to sweeten the atmosphere he 
rounded a shoulder of steep mountain, and a scene of wild grandeur 
and beauty greeted his home-coming eyes. There, on a little island, 
set low in a dark lake, rose the gables and chimneys of his mother’s 
house. He could see the smoke from the hearth where presently he 
would sit, the boat lying still on the beach in which he was about 
to cross to the island dwelling. From the farther shore a huge 
mountain rose, rugged in outline, and so darkly purple in hue as to 
seem almost black, and against this looming background the gray 
buildings on the little island gleamed. On the side of the lake by 
which he was approaching it a range of hills, less stern than the 
more distant ones, slanted. to catch the remnant of sunset light, and 
as the two lines folded together in the distance beyond, the island 
appeared to be set in a triangular, cul-de-sac of water and mountains. 
On one side, towards which the chief windows of the island house 
were placed, the protecting mountains swept apart, revealing a mag- 
nificent sketch of distant country, moorland dyed every shade of 
tawny brown and gold, alternating with darker blots of bog and 
vivid streaks of green, and all shimmering in waves of light away 
to the uncertain borderland of cloud and mystery in which soared, 
with their beaked points, delicate crests, and long curved shoulders, 
the mountains which are known as the Pins or Bens of Connemara. 

He threw his horse’s bridle over a post of the little gate that guard- 
ed the path leading down to the water, and springing into the boat, 
laid hold of the oars. A bugle lay in the stern, and picking it up 
he blew a blast that went ringing across the lake, and came back in 


HOMEWARD. 


55 


a shower of echoes rippling like musical laughter round the margins 
of the lake. 

A few minutes’ pulling with the oars brought him near the shore 
of the island, where he saw a figure standing watching his approach, 
whose outlines puzzled and surprised him. This was not the tiny 
form of his invalid mother, who rarely crept from her couch, and 
could not have come so far from it without help, even to answer her 
son’s bugle-call by meeting him at the landing-place ; neither had it the 
extensive and elderly proportions of the faithful house-keeper who 
had followed her mistress in her reverses of fortune to this lonely re- 
treat ; nor was it as slight and childlike as the little assistant handmaid 
who made the third female inhabitant of the island. And yet the 
figure was familiar to Bryan. With extreme astonishment he gazed 
at it from a distance of about twenty yards, and it seemed to him that 
he was looking on the girl who had been so much in his thoughts 
the day before, whom he had been seeking in Weaver’s Square, and 
who had disappeared with his secret in keeping — had left Dublin, and 
“gone to her friends.” There were the very outlines of her figure, 
with its dark draperies, and that was the attitude in which he re- 
jnembered her, alert and eager, the head thrown a little backward, 
the arms hanging by her sides with unconscious grace. As he stared 
;at her she turned slightly, as if she would go away, and doing so, 
looked, exactly as when she had gone before him leading him to the 
closet. Involuntarily he signed to her to remain, and asking him- 
self by what extraordinary chance he found her here, and what fort- 
une to himself her presence portended, he with a few strokes of the 
oars pushed home the boat between the rocks under her feet. 

Marcella obeyed his signal and held her ground, till, springing up 
the rocks, he stood by her side. 

Then she smiled and held out her hand, and Bryan saw, with a 
confused sense of having been oddly tricked by his imagination, that 
it was not his benefactress of the Liberties after all, but poor Mrs. 
O’Kelly’s interesting niece, who had so strangely made herself at 
home upon his island. 

“You are surprised to see me here, Mr. Kilmorey — that is, if you 
remember me at all. We have met once before, at the Patrick’s 
ball.” 

“I remember, ’’said Kilmorey, thinking it would be strange if he 
did not, all things considered. His mind was still occupied with the 
resemblance between the girl beside him and the girl who had be- 
friended him, and with the curious chance which a second time had 
brought the one before his eyes while the other was in his thoughts. 

“1 have lost my friend,” continued Marcella, in a low voice, anx- 
ious to account at once for her presence, “and Father Daly carried 
me off in a hurry here, to Mrs. Kilmorey, who was kind enough to 
take me in till Crane’s Castle be ready to receive me. Your mother 
does not expect you this evening, sir, and it was by accident that I 
met you on the rock, having heard your music — ” 

Bryan perceived at once how natural was the situation, after all, 
and was surprised at nothing but the little word “sir” which bad 


56 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


slipped out upon Marcella, in momentary forgetfulness of the drill- 
ing which poor Mrs. O’Kelly had given her. He looked at her with 
increased interest, as for a moment she became more closely identi- 
fied in his eyes with the Liberties’ girl. How r ever, he laid the little 
peculiarity of speech to the account of her foreign rearing. Had 
not her aunt told him she had been educated abroad? He quite 
forgot now that Miss O’Kelly herself had contradicted that state- 
ment. 

Marcella, keenly aware of her slip, turned aside her head to hide 
the blush which a sudden fear that she was betraying herself called 
to her face. She had a double reason for desiring to hide forever 
the fact that it was she who had sheltered this gentleman from the 
pursuit of the police. To her own desire to spare him a possible 
humiliation, and perhaps a sense of uneasiness at her possession of 
his secret, was now added the wish of her dead friend that the ex- 
treme lowliness of her antecedents might remain unknown to all 
save Father Daly. The priest had simply said to Mrs. Kilmorey 
that the girl had lately lost her father, who had been in anything 
but prosperous circumstances. Through a feeling of delicacy Mrs. 
Kilmorey had, in condoling with her guest on her bereavement, for- 
borne to speak in any way which would seem to call for more* par- 
ticular explanations; and Marcella hoped the fact that she, now their 
friend and guest, and their future neighbor, had by accident come 
to know an unpleasant secret of Kilmorey’s life, might forever re- 
main in the obscurity in which circumstance had enabled her so far 
to bury it. 

“ Do I understand you to mean that Crane’s Castle is for the fut- 
ure to be your home?” asked Bryan, having first expressed his pleas- 
ure at finding that his mother had been enjoying Miss O’Kelly’s 
companionship in her lonely retreat. 

“Yes. Does it not seem strange? It seems that I have simply 
stepped into Mrs. O’Kelly’s place.” 

“ She has made you her heiress?” 

‘ ‘ And I already feel the burden of the responsibility. Father 
Daly has assured me that you will help me with my people.” 

Kilmorey looked grave. 

“I am not sure that it was fair to you, under the circumstances, 
to bring you to us,” he said, presently. “Of course Father Daly 
acted for the best from his point of view. But there are many sides 
to the question. My mother and I have struck out a peculiar line 
of conduct for ourselves in these troubled times, and have thereby 
incurred the censure of our own class. Whether we have done 
much good by our efforts to get on what we have considered the 
right track remains to be proved by time. Meanwhile we live, as 
you see us, remote from the world and in a very simple way. And 
I question much if one'so— so fitted to mingle in society as you are, 
ought to have your lot thrown in with ours while yet you are in per- 
fect ignorance of the possible consequences to yourself of such an 
accident.” 

“ You mean that Miss Julia O’Flaherty will not care to make an 


HOMEWARD. 


57 


intimate friend of me. She has been here, and, down on the rocks 
yonder, gave me a very solemn warning. I shall not grieve much 
about Miss Julia O’Flaherty.” 

“There are others of a much better order whose acquaintanceship 
you might not like to forfeit, and who would naturally feel interested 
in the heiress of Distresna.” 

Lady Villiers Blake and Mrs. De Lacy Ffrench, for instance. 
Your mother has described to me all the advantages which would 
result to me from their sympathy and patronage. " They have not 
taken me into their homes, however, when I was friendless and 
homeless, and with the friends who have done so I will choose to 
remain.” 

“They have not had the opportunity. They are motherly wom- 
en with daughters of their own, and their countenance would be de- 
sirable for you out in the world, even if you think you can get on 
without it here. My mother is incapacitated both physically and 
by circumstances from ever doing you such service, and you will be 
singularly lonely in that respect if you persist in identifying your- 
self with us.” 

“ I have not led such a life as ought to incline me to desire the 
fashionable world to which these ladies would introduce me. I sim- 
ply know nothing about them, and Providence has sent me to you. 
I shall not step out of the path in which Father Daly has, whether 
fortunately or unfortunately, set my feet. I believe you to be good, 
I know that you are kind, and I choose to belong to you if you will 
let me.” 

Shadows had fallen as they were speaking, all the sunset flames 
were extinct, and in the solemn purple twilight a few quivering stars 
had sprung into keen life above the crown of the great mountain 
overhanging the lake. As Marcella, her face and figure grown less 
distinct in the dusk, spoke the last words, a look of resolution 
straightened her curved lips and an expression crossed her smooth 
brows which again brought his protectress of the Liberties forcibly 
before Kilmorey, and her words, “ If I had not believed you good I 
would not have acted as I have done, ’’seemed repeated in his ear. 
It was the gathering shadows, he supposed, that gave her for the 
moment that mournful look which had struck him so forcibly in the 
humbler girl, and which was happily not characteristic of the heir- 
ess of Distresna. He had not yet, he told himself, got quite accus- 
tomed to the fact of the existence of this strange resemblance, or he 
would not have started so visibly as now he did, causing Marcella to 
glance at him inquiringly. 

“Nothing,” he said. “ Only you are so very like— another per- 
son whom I have known. I think I told you so the first and last 
time I met you.” 

“Yes,” said Marcella, controlling her alarm ; “likenesses are curi- 
ous things.” She thought of how she must try to be as unlike her 
old self in manner and speech as possible, and involuntarily with- 
drew her hand from her breast, where, under her dress, lay the ring 
that Kilmorey had given her. 


58 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


And just then the little handmaid from the house came running 
to tell Mr. Bryan that the mistress had recognized his bugle-call, and 
was waiting impatiently for his arrival in her room. 


CHAPTER XI. 

INISHEEN. 

The interior of the home at Inisheen (the little Isle) consisted of a 
few rooms and passages all on the same floor. The outer walls were 
of a great thickness, the chimneys stout and low, the windows small 
and square, the porch strong as a little tower, having two doors, one 
on each side, to be opened or shut in turn as the wind shifted. Set 
as it was in the middle of the wind-haunted lake, it had the look of 
a little fortress, and such it was to the inhabitants when they stood 
siege in it against the wintry elements. The three or four acres of 
green turf which surrounded the dwelling and sloped towards the 
rocks were studded with clumps of low growing trees and bushes, 
and a thick mat of ivy clung to every wall of the house from base 
to eaves. All varieties of sea-birds, gulls, puffins, curlews, and wild 
geese, made their nests in the rocks, or came in long flights from the 
sea, which, though invisible from Inisheen, was not far away, and 
their shrill cries and pipings as they swept the lake like trails of mist 
gave notice when there was a storm at hand. 

There were only two living-rooms at Inisheen, and the drawing- 
room walls were two-thirds lined with books, the shelves for which 
had been set up by Bryan himself, when stress of circumstance drove 
him, with his mother, to put into the little island as a harbor. A 
few eastern rugs on the floor, some material of the same kind drap- 
ing the short, deep-seated windows, with a pretty supply of foreign 
ornaments and curiosities, gave elegance and color to the little in- 
terior, where fire as well as lamps burned on that summer night as 
a protection from chills and damps, which, dropping down from 
the mountains and exhaling from the lake, might be seen any time 
from dark till dawn floating like wraiths upon the bosom of the 
waters. A harp stood in one corner of the room, and among the 
few pictures which the book-shelves had left space for on the walls 
were an engraving of Robert Emmet, speaking in his own defence 
upon his trial, and another of the old Irish House of Commons, 
containing a multitude of small figures, many of which were por- 
traits. 

Marcella was sitting at a table, turning over some precious etch- 
ings; Mrs. Kiimorey was reclining on her couch, her eyes eagerly 
following the movements of her son, who walked about the room 
while the conversation turned on the future treatment of the discon- 
tented tenantry of Distresna. 

Mrs. Kiimorey was a small, slight woman, looking more like a 


INISHEEN - . 


59 


withered child than a woman who had matured and grown old. 
She was all white from head to foot, except for her blue eyes and 
pink lips. Her hair was snow-white, and dressed prettily on the top 
of her head, her face was delicately pale, and her gown and shawl 
were both of some soft white woollen material. 

“We are not responsible for bringing her here, Bryan. Mrs. 
O’Kelly confided her to Father Daly, and Father Daly carried her 
off here at once to me. We have laid no plot to influence her move- 
ments. She is twenty-one years of age, and capable of managing 
her own affairs. And indeed she has shown aptitude for the busi- 
ness, and some originality in striking out a course for herself. My 
dear, will you tell Bryan what you have already been about?” 

Marcella put aside the etchings, and leaning her elbows on the 
table, and clasping her hands under her chin, looked towards Bryan 
with a frank smile. She felt instinctively that he was less likely to 
identify her with the Liberties girl, so long as she smiled, for she 
had observed that it was generally when she looked grave or sad 
that he turned those puzzled inquiring glances on her which con- 
veyed to her keen apprehension that the scene of his introduction to 
the secret closet was present to his mind. On that eventful night of 
his concealment Marcella had certainly not smiled at him. A pa- 
tient courage, an uncomplaining mournfulness had been expressed 
then by the eyes and lips which were irradiated now with a steady 
gladness which was by no means assumed. For, still lost as she 
was in deffghted surprise at the change of fortune that had trans- 
ferred her to this peaceful, refined, and romantic home, and placed 
her as a centre of interest between her hero and his mother, smiles 
came to her more naturally than they had ever done before in the 
course of her short life. 

“I have been visiting my people with Father Daly,” she said, 
“not, however, as their landlord, but only as a friend of his. I 
begged him to let me make their acquaintance first, and try to gain 
their good-will before announcing myself as the future receiver of 
their rents.” 

“ A happy thought,” said Bryan, watching eagerly all the changes 
of her animated face. “And how have you found them?” 

“I have only visited a few as yet. Father Daly is to come for 
me to-morrow again. In some of the cabins the people were as sul- 
len and reserved as they looked hungry and poverty-stricken. In 
other places I thought them too civil. They seemed to distrust a 
stranger, even though she accompanied Father Daly. But in sever- 
al cases I think I made my way as a friend. Miss O’Flaherty had 
told me that unless I gave them presents and made them great prom- 
ises they would hate me. I gave them nothing and promised them 
nothing, yet I think I shall be welcome to some of them when I go 
back again.” 

“I do not doubt it. The freemasonry of human sympathy is 
hardly known to Miss Julia O’Flaherty. It is only too well under- 
stood by our poor Irish cotters. I am glad you have made so good 
a beginning, Miss O’Kelly. That you should understand the people 


60 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


you have to deal with by personal experience, rather than take them 
for granted through the counsels and representations of others, is 
just what is most desirable for you. It is better for you to follow 
neither in my steps nor in Miss O’Flaherty’s steps, but to make 
original footprints of your own. Not every one is capable of doing 
so. It requires both heart and brains, though most people think all 
that is needed is a rent-extracting machine. Indeed, so strained and 
warped from the true uses have the relations between landlord and 
tenant become, that even at the best a landlord’s is hardly a desir- 
able position. For my own part I have gradually withdrawn from 
it till I find myself now as little of a landlord as possible on the 
acres my forefathers owned; and for this I may thank my forefa- 
thers themselves, w T ho, as some irreverent wag said the other day, 
sold my birthright for a mess of poteen, and, figuratively speaking, 
gave their souls for a fox-hunt. Not that I am an enem} r of the 
hunt; on the contrary; but there are more ways than one of break- 
ing a man’s neck by means of the sport. I will show you to-mor- 
row, Miss O’Kelly, if you and Father Daly will give me a seat on 
his car when you are going your rounds, the house in which your 
humble servant was born; once a jovial house, an open house, a reck- 
less, rack-renting house as any in old Ireland. The roof is now fall- 
ing in, and the chimneys extend their cold arms to heaven as if cry- 
ing out against the ruin that has descended upon it. Only that I 
had a mother — well, you will know my mother by-ar^-by — who 
preferred a straight conscience and simple living to ancestral halls 
and all that kind of thing, I should this moment be patching at that 
family roof-tree, and sending the smoke of unholy feasts up those 
gaping chimneys. As it is, we have slackened rein on the necks of 
our tenantry, and in many instances given them the bit in their own 
teeth. We have here, in this island sanctuary, set up our few re- 
maining household gods; and as in our case it was not too late to 
mend, we have enjoyed infinite peace since we ceased to hold up 
our heads among the great ones of the earth. Our plan has worked 
well, I think, though I do not pretend that in trying to do what is 
best for my people, I have succeeded in satisfying them all. In 
every community there is more or less of a sinister element which 
blows like a contrary wind against the prow of all well-meaning 
efforts. However, I have been content to struggle on in the teeth 
of such difficulty, remembering how the demon was first evoked in 
this country, and knowing how hard it is to lay a demon, once he 
has been evoked. Remembering, too, how early in life I myself 
was misled with tod much ardor, and cherished a delusion, and had 
almost descended — ” 

“We will not speak' of that,” said Mrs. Kilmorey, with a swift 
motion of her hand. 

“No, we will not speak of that,” said Bryan. “I already owe 
Miss O’Kelly an apology for my egoism. My only excuse is that I 
have been led into it through my anxiety for her in her present po- 
sition. She is placed as I was somewhat, and is called on to act. I 
hope she will neither have to run the risks. I have run, nor miss her 


DISTRESNA. 


61 


opportunity of doing whatever good she may. I feel that she ought 
to have the benefit of every one’s experience.” 

“I have already had several varieties,” said Marcella. “First, 
poor Mrs. O’Kelly instructed me carefully from her point of view, 
next Miss O’Flaherty gave me a great deal of information, as did 
also Mr. O’Flaherty during the day I spent at Mount Ramshackle. 
From Mrs. Kilmorey I .have heard a great deal that has placed my 
difficulties plainly before me ; and now, Mr. Kilmorey — ” 

Bryan wondered why she smiled at him so incessantly while she 
spoke, and in the fascination of her smile he now almost forgot the 
subject of her speech. He did not know that it was to guard his 
secret, or rather her own secret knowledge of his secret, that she 
smiled, dazzling his eyes with bright glances so that he might not 
see behind such glamour the melancholy Marcella of the Liberties. 

“She must be happy here,” he thought. “She must be feeling 
happy with us. Would to God she could always stay!” and then, 
almost shocked at the vehemence of this wish, which was a revela- 
tion to himself, he answered, quickly, 

“ I hope you will use all these experiences only as so many lamps 
to guide your way. I have no doubt your own womanly instinct 
will find you a path for yourself which nobody has trod before you.” 

But after they had separated for the night, and all the lights were 
out in the house, he walked down on the rocks where there was al- 
ways a murmur of music at night, a faint, sweet clashing of sounds 
in the air even when storms were still, a mingling of splashing wa- 
ter, whispering reeds, and the cries echoed from shore to shore of 
wild birds among the rocks or riding late on the circling waves that 
girdle Inisheen. And as he went he thought, 

“An impoverished man, one perhaps fatally marked by misfort- 
une, to think of taking possession of the future of a creature so full 
of life and freshness and promise? No, I must not dare to dream of 
her. ” 

Marcella meanwhile followed him with her thought, and asked 
herself what was that evil from which he had with difficulty been 
saved, of which his mother would not suffer him to speak? And 
holding fast the ring she wore round her neck, she fell asleep. 


CHAPTER XII. 

DISTRESNA. 

He who has never ridden on an Irish jaunting-car — a tidy little 
car with good springs and cushions, drawn by a fast trotting horse 
— has not travelled so along Irish hilly roads or through Irish green 
boreens, has missed one of the pleasantest sensations in life. No 
other vehicle mounts the rugged hill so boldly and easily, and rattles 
down again so joyously into the hollow of the capricious highway 


62 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


or by-way. No other vehicle affords such easy opportunity for 
friendly chat between two travellers who sit well back on either seat 
of the car, leaning towards each other with each an elbow on the 
“well” cushion. But it is almost as difficult to those not to the 
manner born to sit a jaunting-car as to sit a horse. A certain al- 
most unconscious grasp with the knee and poise of one foot is nec- 
essary to give the rider that birdlike sensation of skimming through 
the air at will wdiich is so utterly unknown to people who drive in 
carriages. 

Father Daly, Bryan, and Marcella, all being to the manner born, 
pursued their way through the hills as lightly as the breeze blew, 
till, at a turn of a road, a poor woman suddenly appeared, and cour- 
tesying in the middle of the path, requested Father Daly to come 
with her on a sick call. 

“ Well, and who is ill now?” 

“ Och, yer riverence, it’s the ould man himsel’.” 

“Are you sure he hasn’t got the toothache, like the last time I 
went and found him bravely?” 

“Oh, sorra fear, yer riverence, but he’s bad this time. It’s con- 
voked altogether he is, an’ not expected since six this morning.” 

“Overeat himself, I suppose,” said Father Daly, in a tone that 
gave a pathetic meaning to the seemingly heartless words. 

“That’s about it, Father Daly,” said the woman, understanding. 

“I believe he’s ready for the road, so. Poor Barney was always 
a good warrant to love God Almighty,” said the priest, solemnly, 
using the idiom of the people the better to make himself understood. 

“ Thrue for you, Father Daly, but ye see the terrible state of the 
politics has druv his prayers a bit out of his mind, an’ he’s off his re- 
ligion this while back. An’ though I don’t mane rightly to say he 
doesn’t love God, still he doesn’t pay high encomiums to him the 
way he used to do, yer riverence, an’ he doesn’t insinuate afther 
him.” 

“ Well, well, I’ll go and talk to him a bit, and we’ll make that all 
right again,” said Father Daly. 

“ I’m going off here to a place up the mountain where the people 
live chiefly on air, and sometimes it disagrees with them,” he added, 
to Marcella. “Sometimes it disagrees with them,” he repeated — 
muttering to himself, as he slid gently down from the car, being no 
longer of an age to jump off. 

“Do you mean that it is a case of starvation?” asked Marcella, 
eagerly. She knew enough of the pains of want to be quick at 
guessing what was meant. 

“Something of that, something of that. What I would call the 
slow hunger if I were a doctor and could invent a new disease— not 
a new one, either, but one that belongs to Ireland, as cholera belongs 
to the East. There, now, that will do,” as Marcella took a little 
basket from the well of the car and handed it promptly to the wom- 
an. “And now, Bryan, my boy, take the reins yourself and finish 
the drive, and you can call for me at the Windy Gap when you’re 
jogging homeward. If I’m there an hour too soon it does not mat’ 


DISTRESNA. 


63 


ter. Sure I’ve my breviary in my pocket, and I couldn’t read my 
office in the middle of finer scenery.” 

The priest and the woman having set off up a foot-path slanting 
along the face of the overhanging hill, Kilmorey and Marcella con- 
tinued their journey together. 

In spite of his self-warning of the night before, Bryan felt a keen 
delight in the chance that had given Marcella to his sole keeping 
for several hours. As they spun along the level roads, or walked 
slowly up the steep hills, the thoughtful look on his face relaxed, 
and his eyes shone. They two were alone in the brilliant weather, 
among the blue mountains, breathing the freshest, most exhilarating 
breezes of heaven, and he found the solitary companionship sur- 
passingly sweet. Nothing draws two spirits, if they are already 
sympathetic, more closely together than to be placed side by side in 
some impressive solitude of Nature, where under her spell all that is 
noblest and best in one heart rushes to meet what corresponds with 
it in the other. Dropping his well-grounded presentiments of com- 
ing misfortune behind him like a mantle that impeded his course, 
Kilmorey went forward through the sunshine with something of the 
feelings one would give to a soul newty and unexpectedly arrived in 
Paradise. As wild, subtle, and penetrating as the odor of the mount- 
ain heather on the wind that filled his nostrils was this new influ- 
ence which overmastered his melancholy humor with its potent de- 
light. Yet so strong was his habit of reserve and self-control that 
the only sign of the new joy awakened within him lay in the swift 
changes in his eyes and on his mouth as he flicked with his whip 
and looked up the impurpled bluffs and braes, and away into the infi- 
nite glories of sky and highland ahead, thrillingly conscious of the 
nearness of the fair face half turned to him from the other side of the 
car, yet only allowing himself an occasional glance at it. At last on 
the top of a hill he stopped the car, and said, 

“Now, Miss O’Kelly, if you will stand up for a few minutes, I 
will show you the lie of this side of Distresna with regard to the 
lands near it — my own and Mr. O’Flaherty’s. I say my own, for 
though almost all that we can descry from here has passed from my 
hands into those of peasant proprietors, it is the most precious of all 
my possessions — I look on it as the very apple of my eye. I am 
watching with I cannot tell what eagerness to see how the scheme 
will work.” 

“Up to the present how has it worked?” asked Marcella, who 
stood on the foot-board of the car, holding the rail with one hand, 
and with the other shading her eyes from the strong sunlight as she 
gazed down into the variegated valley in the direction indicated by 
Bryan with his whip. 

“Look through this,” he said, giving her a field-glass, “ and your 
own eyes will suggest the answer. To this side, where you see 
white walls and new thatches, and here and there the absence of of- 
fensive heaps by the door, and the beginning of general neatness 
about, there are some of my small peasant proprietors. Over yon- 
der, where you see smoke coming out of the hill-side through an old 


64 


MAECELLA GEACE. 


broken basket— that is Distresna, and you will find many of your 
tenants burrowing thus in the earth like moles.” 

“Why?” 

“ Because, they will tell you (that is, if they have courage to speak) 
that the traditions of the country, and all the experiences of those who 
within their own memory have made the trial, go to prove that any 
one who makes a show of decency and neatness in his dwelling has 
his rent raised without fail, before he has had time to reap any ben- 
efit himself from his own improvements, and only that he may be 
forced to clear out and make room for a richer tenant.” 

“But you had not — you would not have treated them so!” 

“lam sorry to say that in my father’s time it was done, and they 
naturally expected me to act like others of my family and class. I 
found them quite unbelieving and unmanageable on the old lines. 
On the new ones — well, already the best of them look on me as their 
friend.” 

‘ ‘ And yet, does it not seem a pity to let the old relations of land- 
lord and tenant quite die out?” said Marcella. “It seems to me 
such a good relation if every one did his duty.” 

“ With an ‘ if ’ what cannot man do? Take the universe to pieces 
and rebuild it again,” said Kilmorey. “Unfortunately men with 
power too often think more of doing their will than their duty, and 
in world-forgotten places like this every owner of a few hundred 
acres has been accustomed to look upon himself as a sultan. As for 
myself I thought the matter out and put it thus: many men have 
probably had as generous thoughts in the beginning of their career 
as those that come to me. How do I know that later in life I shall 
not have become so attached to some form of selfishness or other, 
which will show me things in a dilferent light from that in which I 
see them now? I will put it out of my ©wn power to be a persecutor 
of my fellow-men, even with the most plausible reasoning on my 
side. I confess that a hereditary liking for the position of landlord 
has stood in my way, and, even now, if I can possibly save the mas- 
tership of the remnant of my property, I feel that I will do it. But 
not unless I can by this means effect as much improvement as by 
the other. I will have no slaves living under my rule.” 

Marcella did not reply. In her heart she leaned to the side of 
landlordism. It seemed to her that it ought to be so easy for the 
rich and powerful to take care of the ignorant and poor. She, her- 
self, in her consciousness of a state of general ignorance which she 
innocently thought must be very peculiar for one in her position as 
a lady, felt ever inclined to turn to those above herein education and 
rearing for example and guidance. She was aware, too, that her 
exceptional experience of the tribulations of the poor ought to give 
her (when educated, as she now hoped to be), a particular advantage 
in the efforts she might make to raise the condition of those over 
whom she had been so strangely and wonderfully placed. She felt 
a strong desire to try her own powers of working good before throw- 
ing the reins out of her hands that had as yet hardly grasped 
them. 


DISTEESNA. 


65 


“ You do not advise me to follow your example, to turn my ten- 
ants at once into peasant proprietors?” 

“I advise you to do nothing till you shall see further for yourself. 
For one thing, many of your people are incapable of becoming pro- 
prietors until the present state of the law of purchase is amended. 
You would have to lend money, a certain proportion of the money 
(to buy your own land), to your purchasing tenant, and afterwards 
take a mortgage on your own land (yours no longer) as your only 
security for repayment. In almost all cases this is what I have done, 
and at the present moment I find it anything but an enriching pro- 
cedure. In reserving a part of my property, stopping my sales, I 
act under necessity, as I have no more money to venture, and so feel 
no scruple about persisting in the role of landlord to a certain extent. 
For the rest, we shall see. Now, Miss O’Kelly, at which of these 
underground edifices do you wish to pay a visit?” 

By this time they were wending up a by-road, so rutty and uneven 
that they had had to alight and walk, one on either side of the horse’s 
head, while the car jolted over stones and into hollows. 

“I want to see a Mrs. Conneely who lives about here. I talked to 
her on the road the other day and promised to come to see her. 
Ah, there is the young man who was with her. This must be the 
place.” 

A shock head was protruded from the hole under the hill, and a 
voice said, 

“Sure it’s the young lady hersel’ that’s come to us. Me sowl! 
but I knowed she wasn’t wan o’ the forgettin’ sort!” 

At the same time the wail of an infant in pain was heard from the 
underground cabin. 

“Is the baby not better?” asked Marcella of the owner of the 
shock head, who, having withdrawn it for a few moments, put it 
forth again. 

“Musha, it’s in heaven any betterment ’ll be that is for it,” said 
the lad, pulling his wild forelock as he stepped out of the hole and in- 
vited the lady in. “Only don’t for yer life tell that to the mother 
o’t, miss.” 

Marcella could at first see nothing in the cabin for the smoke, 
which the basket in the chimney-hole failed to carry successfully 
aloft, but presently she descried a woman on her knees before a kind 
of cradle made of a cleeve (turf-creel), set upon two long, dry sods of 
turf, and heard the reiterated word, half a caress and half a moan 
of agony, 

‘ ‘ Acushla machree ! Acushla machree ! Acushla machree ! m,achree /” 

Marcella waited for a few moments, and then put her hand on the 
woman’s shoulder. There is as much difference of expression be- 
tween one light touch and another as between gentle tones of voice. 
The meaning conveyed by the tips of five fingers may be cruel or 
tender, callous and cold, or exquisitely sympathetic. Marcella’s 
touch found, without jarring, the chord most susceptible of sympa- 
thy in the mother’s suffering heart. 

“ What is the matter with him? What can we do for him?” she 
5 


66 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


whispered, kneeling beside the poor woman, and stealing an arm 
round her. 

“Och, it’s only the hunger, miss — he can’t ate the yellow male, 
an’ I’ve nothing else for him. We haven’t had a tint o’ milk these 
three days. ” 

The next minute Marcella was warming some milk that she had 
brought in the car, and was presenting it to the mother, who, after 
making an effort to speak, had fallen forward again on the cradle, 
embracing the little white set form it held with both her lean brown 
arms. 

“ I think it is only exhaustion, and this may not be too late,” she 
said. “Let me try;” and gently putting the dazed creature aside, 
Marcella lifted the child in her arms, and sitting down on a broken 
stool, began to moisten the infant’s lips with the natural nourish- 
ment. The pale lips moved and received the fluid, and after a time 
the eyes opened and seemed to look for more. In a quarter of an 
hour the child was unmistakably better. Marcella remained yet 
another half-hour, nursing, feeding, caressing it, while the mother 
knelt speechless watching her, no more daring to interfere than if it 
was the Holy Mother herself who had come down out of heaven and 
taken her child’s case out of her hands. . The tall lad with the shock 
head stood by, his great hollow eyes fixed on Marcella, a look of 
eager appreciation of the scene on his pallid face. Finally, when 
the child seemed to fall into a natural sleep, Marcella restored him 
to his mother’s arms. 

The poor woman pressed the babe convulsively to her breast, as 
she took the seat from which her visitor rose, and, not attempting to 
speak her thanks, merely lifted the hem of Marcella’s dress and put 
it to her lips. 

“I will leave you this bottle of milk, and to-morrow I shall send 
more. Mike will come for it, perhaps,” said Marcella, looking in the 
youth’s face, as if making a personal request. 

Mike’s ready, “ I will, miss,” nearly choked him. He brushed his 
hand across his eyes, and escorted the lady from the cabin, and then 
glanced at her with a kind of reverential rapture as she stood on the 
grass, looking up and down for Kilmorey, who, having witnessed 
something of the foregoing scene in the cabin, was now making a 
meditation upon it at a distance, as he fed Father Daly’s little fast- 
trotting horse. 

The pig, who had been another witness of the scene within the 
cabin, now also came forth to see the lady off. 

“Why do you not sell that rather than be hungry?” asked Mar- 
cella of Mike, as the animal stood grunting at her, whether in re- 
proach or thanksgiving who can tell? 

“Is it the pig, miss? Sure that’s the rint. He’s all we have be- 
tune oursel’s an’ the cowld mountain-side. Whin he goes, sure, we’ll 
all have to folly him, barrin’ he goes into the lan’lord's pocket.” 

Marcella smiled broadly at the notion of Mike and the pig in her 
pocket. 

“Iam going to buy him from you,” she said, “ and you can keep 


DISTRESNA. 


67 


him for me till the landlord wants him. I will give you the price 
of him to-morrow when you come. Best market price. Honor 
bright. And, by-the-way, who is your landlord?” 

Mike was so struck dumb, not only at this announcement of her 
intended purchase, but by her peculiar idea of her rights as a pur- 
chaser, that he made no answer, only turned crimson up to the roots 
of his hair. 

“Who is the landlord, Mike?” But Mike could not even hear the 
question, so wildly was the pig still running through his head. 

“It’s too much, miss,” he blurted out at last. “Sure you don’t 
know how much that baste is worth. The half year’s rent’s inside 
of him.” 

“ Seven pounds, Mike.” 

“ Oh musha, miss, not so much as that.” And then, utterly abashed 
by such magnificent generosity, he hung his head, while his thoughts 
whirled riotously in the expectation of coming affluence to the 
family. 

“ But you have not told me yet, Mike, who is the landlord.” 

“ Sure she’s dead, miss, an’ the agents turned off, and sorra wan 
owns us this minute, for the new landlord’s a lady too, an’ we haven’t 
seen her or heard tell of her, an’ maybe niver will. But the new 
agent ’ll be down on us for the next gale of rint. An’ av coorse he’ll 
be harder than the last one. ” 

“Why should he be harder? And how do you know there will 
be an agent?” 

“Ladies always has agents,” said Mike, “and the next agent is al- 
ways worse than the one before. That’s all we know about it yet, 
miss.” 

“ Well, Mike, we’ll march our pig to meet him when he comes, 
and we needn’t be afraid of him for a while, anyway,” said Marcel- 
la, laughing. “But how have you managed up to this?” 

“Ye see, miss, me brother-in-law, that’s her husband ” (jerking his 
thumb towards the cabin), “ is away in England workin’ at the har- 
vest, an’ he’ll bring a bit o’ money home wit him. Meself would ha’ 
been wit him only for the faver I’ve just riz out of, miss. I’m the 
last of a long family mesel’, an’ only for bein’ sickly I’d be in Amer- 
ikay like the rest o’ them that sends a pound now and again to help 
to stop the gap. Sure only that the weather does go dead again us 
we’d always have potatoes and turf, and could go abroad to airn the. 
rint. But whin the rain rots the potatoes, and there’s no dryin’ for 
the turf, an’ the yalla male’s that dear — och we’d need to be angels 
wit wings, and no atin’ at all, to get on wit it.” 

“ Now, what do you think, Mike? Would you not be better off 
if you were away entirely, all of you, to a country where it’s easier 
to get something to eat?” 

“Faix, miss, an’ maybe we would. Only I’m thinkin’ the ould 
hills would be lonesome witout some of us. An’ there’s a power 
o’ us gone already, ye see, miss — there’s a power o’ us gone al- 
ready.” 

Mike did not know what a weighty truth he had uttered. Surely 


68 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


enough the accumulated masses of exiled Irish are proving them- 
selves a terrible power. 

The desire to hear the praises of Kilmorey here constrained Mar- 
cella to ask a reason for the superior appearance of some of the 
houses down yonder in the valley, 

“ Sure that’s Mr. Bryan’s land, miss, an’ isn’t he making their own 
owners of the whole o’ them! It’s what they call pisanl propriety , 
miss; maybe ye have heard of it?” 

“He has been good to the people. Do they like him for it?” 

Mike lowered his voice. “Sure, miss, they love the ground he 
walks — barrin’them” — he broke off, and looked around him cau- 
tiously — “them that we needn’t be mintionin’. There’s some that 
has an ould crow to pluck wit him, an’ I’m feared they’re on for 
pluckin’ it.” 

The change in Mike’s face was even more remarkable as he spoke 
his last words than were the words themselves, and as Marcella 
noted this, her own eyes took such a scared expression that Mike 
said suddenly, as if a light had dawned on him, 

“Maybe he is somethin’ to ye, miss. I mane, maybe he has you be- 
spoke!” 

Though the words were audacious, the anxious delicacy of Mike’s 
manner of saying them forbade all offence. Marcella colored, but 
said, frankly, 

“ Mr. Kilmorey is a friend of mine, but that is all. Nobody has 
me ‘ bespoke.’ ” 

Mike’s countenance brightened. What was it to him, poor lad, 
what gentleman might have a claim upon the beautiful lady who 
was as far removed above himself as the stars are above the little 
bog pools that occasionally reflect them? Yet somehow it pleased 
poor, gaunt, shock-headed, ragged Mike, that this creature of his sud- 
den worship belonged as yet to no man, had, as he might imagine if 
he liked, no fixed place among the “ gintliry,” and could wander at 
her own sweet will among the mountains, as likely to have come 
down out of the clouds as to have come up out of the lowlands. 

Nevertheless, with the quickness of perception of his race and 
class, he had read in Marcella’s eyes that Kilmorey ’s safety was dear 
to her; and he said, as Bryan himself was seen leading the horse and 
caj to meet them, 

“ Tell him to take care o’ kimsel’, miss, for there’s tliim that’s set 
to hurt him. Ax him to take a trip to see Amerikay. ” 

There was no time to question him as to the meaning of his omi- 
nous words. The next minute Marcella was looking back from her 
seat on the car at the wild figure of Mike, as he stood gazing with 
reverential eyes in the direction towards which her face was set, long 
after he could see it no more. 

With a cold shudder she felt that in return for her exertions a 
thorn had been planted in her heart, and one which it would be hard 
to eradicate. She felt indignant at Mike for suggesting what could 
hardly be true. Had not Kilmorey’s fault in the eyes of his friends 
been only too great a sympathy with the disaffected people, and had 


DISTRESNA. 


69 


it not been made clear to her that any danger threatening him (and, 
thank God, it was blown over!) had loomed from a quarter directly 
opposite to that now so strangely indicated? How could she con- 
vey such a message to Kilmorey’s ear. And yet she must not dare 
to sleep without communicating it to him. As they moved on, Bry- 
an noticed her changed and dejected looks, and said, 

“You must not take the sufferings of these poor people too much 
to heart. Happily you have the power to alleviate it.” 

In saying this he was thinking of a power distinct from that which 
mere money had placed in her hands. But Marcella’s thoughts did 
not follow his words, being quite filled with the idea of his danger, 
and thinking her tired, he remarked that it was now too late to pay 
further visits. 

“You gave so much time to that baby,” he said, “that if we 
do not now get on quickly, Father Daly will be reading his office 
in the Windy Gap till it grows too dark to see, even with spec- 
tacles.” 

“ But we can easily get home before dark,” said Marcella, anxious- 
ly; and Kilmorey, wondering at the sudden change in her spirits, 
urged the horse to a faster trot. As they spun along the road in 
silence the girl’s mind was distracted with doubts and questions. 
Ought she not to put him on his guard at once, and yet why should 
she spoil the drive which he was so evidently enjoying, and bring 
back the cloud of care to his eyes which were shining on her now 
with a happy tenderness? She hated to be the messenger of evil to 
him; and, after all, did she not utterly disbelieve in the vague warn- 
ing which she had got to give him? Of course it must be given. 
She would not take the risk of withholding it. But there was no 
need to think of it now, not till these beautiful moments of travel 
and companionship should be displaced by the inevitable future, 
and pushed back to the greedy past gaping for them. 

Kilmorey, having felt the mountain air grow keener as they as- 
cended the pass leading to the road by which they were to return tow- 
ards Inisheen, wrapped her in a woollen shawl, and then set him- 
self to beguile her fatigue with stories of the country through which 
they were passing. 

“Over yonder, Miss O’Kelly, is the old home of the Kilmoreys, 
the house in which I was born. Does it not present a wild specta- 
cle, a striking instance of the thrift of Irish landlords, for you see 
when that roof-tree began to decay rents were paid, and those who 
received them ought to have been able to keep the wolf from the 
door. In that old house what dreams I have dreamed. As a lad I 
felt that there was something terribly wrong in the existing state of 
things, and I wanted to redeem Ireland. My mother, as you have 
discovered, has warm national blood in her veins. Some of her fam- 
ily fled to France long ago and joined the Irish brigades there. Al- 
most all of her people are exiles through political causes in the past, 
and she, God bless her, fed me on Irish history and poetry, while my 
father, good easy man, thought of little besides his hunt and his hunt- 
dinner, and his flowing punch-bowl. The consequence was that I 


70 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


even went beyond my mother in ardor for the Irish cause, and at 
seventeen rushed into the arms of the Fenians.” 

Marcella uttered a little cry of dismay. 

Kilmorey smiled. “You needn’t be frightened,” he said, “lam 
not a Fenian now. My mother discovered the matter and appealed 
to my father, and I was sent to Cambridge, and afterwards to travel. 
In the course of a few years I had learned to think; and though my 
enthusiasm for Ireland was no way cooled, I saw the folly and wick- 
edness of dreams of war which had not the remotest chance of suc- 
cess. Since then I have turned my attention to the consideration of 
more rational ways of benefiting my country than those proposed by 
Fenianism, which, though it began with a bold scheme for war, has, 
I am sorry to say, degenerated so far as to identify itself with socie- 
ties for assassination. I shook myself free of it with some trouble 
and at some risk; but over yonder, Miss O’Kelly, in that romantic 
little green hollow between two purple hills, is the spot where we 
used to drill. Convert as I am to sane and peaceful aims, grown old 
in wisdom and experience, I can yet feel the thrill of an exquisite 
sense of daring and danger, the strong rapture in the vivid hope of 
one day marching to battle for Faith and Fatherland, to win a tri- 
umph which was to be followed by the blossoming of the wilderness 
and food in plenty for the famishing. All the heroic patriots of an- 
tiquity were my models, and I may well regret the passing of the 
youthful fervor of spirit that brought me yonder in the silence of a 
moonlight night, my gun on my shoulder, my heart beating like a 
martial drum, and my mind fixed on the determination to risk indi- 
vidual destruction for the sake of the future of my race.” 

Marcella was silent. From all this revelation she had gained a 
few ideas. In the first place he had really been a Fenian, and in the 
second place, by renouncing Fenianism he had incurred the enmity 
of that formidable body. From which side now did his danger pro- 
ceed, a danger of which he himself was perhaps this moment in ig- 
norance? Was it as a former Fenian, an offender against the law, 
or as a seceder from the secret society, that he had become a mark 
for vengeance at unknown hands? His escape from the police on 
that memorable night seemed to point to the one, and the warning 
given by Mike implied the other. If a mingling of the two might 
be imagined — 

Here a sharp turn of the road brought them into the Windy Gap, 
and Father Daly climbed upon the car. Then Marcella made an 
effort to rally her spirits, and related the experiences of the drive to 
his reverence. 

Father Daly rubbed his hands in delight. “ Capital 1” he cried, 
“ capital! What will become of the poor creatures with joy when 
they find whom they have got for their landlord?” 

The priest returned with them to Inisheen for the night, and after 
dinner at his urgent cry for music, Mrs. Kilmorey’s harp was car- 
ried to the side of her couch, and she sung for the little company. 

“Only Bryan and Father Daly would listen to an old woman’s 
song, ’’she said to Marcella; “they have so long been accustomed to 


DISTRESNA. 


11 


hear me that they will not allow either the voice or the harp-strings 
to be cracked. As for you, my dear, you will have to try to be pa- 
tient.” 

“ Give us the ‘ Wild Geese,’ ” said Father Daly. “Miss O’Kelly, 
the song which Mrs. Kilmorey sings for me every time I come here, 
was translated from ihe Irish, long ago, by an ancestress of hers, 
whose lover had to fly the country, and whom she never saw again.” 

The little white-haired lady, sitting upon her sofa, touched her in- 
strument as if with fairy fingers, and a wild flowing melody that 
sounded to Marcella’s ears like fitful weeping trickled over the harp- 
strings. 

“ I had no sail to cross the sea, 

A brave white bird went forth from me ; 

My heart was hid beneath his wing : 

0 strong white bird, come back in spring! 

“ I watched the wild geese rise and cry 
Across the flaring western sky, 

Their winnowing pinions clove the light, 

Then vanished, and came down the night. 

“ I laid me low, my day was done, 

1 longed not for the morrow’s sun, 

But closely swathed in swoon of sleep, 

Forgot to hope, forgot to weep. 

“ The moon, through veils of gloomy red, 

A warm, yet dusky, radiance shed, 

All down our valley’s golden stream, 

And flushed my slumber with a dream. 

“ Her mystic torch lit up my brain, 

My spirit rose and lived amain, 

And followed through the windy spray 
That bird upon its watery way. 

“ 0 wild white bird , 0 wait for me , 

My soul hath wings to fly with thee , . 

On foam-waves lengthening out afar 
We'll ride towards the western star. 

“ O'er glimmering plains, through forest gloom, 

To track a wanderer' s feet I come , 

’ Mid lonely swamp , by haunted brake , 

I'll pass unfrighted for his sake. 

“ Alone, afar , his footsteps roam , 

The stars his roof the tent his home ; 
iSaw'st thou what way the wild geese flew , 

To sunward through the thick night dew ? 

“ Carry my soul where he abides , 

And pierce the mystery that hides 
His presence, and through time and space 
Look with mine eyes upon his face. 


12 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“ Beside his prairie fire he rests , 

All feathered things are in their nests: 

‘ What strange wild bird is this?' 1 he saith, 

‘ Still fragrant with the ocean's breath. 

u ‘ Perch on my hand , thou briny thing , 

And let me stroke thy shy wet wing; 

What message in thy soft eye thrills? 

I see again my native hills , 

“ 1 And vale , the river's silver streak , 

The mist upon the blue , blue peak, 

The shadows gray, the golden sheaves, 

The mossy walls , the russet eaves. 

ut I greet the friends I've loved and lost. 

Do all forget ? No, tempest-tost, 

That braved for me the ocean's foam, 

Some heart remembers me at home. 

“ ‘ Ere spring's return I will be there , 

Thou strange sea-fragrant messenger!' 

I wake and weep ; the moon shines sweet, 

O dream too short ! 0 bird too fleet !” 

“It is too long for a song,” said Mrs. Kilmorey, having finished. 
“ No one but Father Daly would willingly listen to more than three 
stanzas. The length of ‘ Silent O Moyle ’ is the length for a perfect 
song.” And she sung Moore’s exquisite melody. 

“ Delicious!” murmured Father Daly, with a long sigh of enjoy- 
ment. “Now, Bryan, where is your fiddle?” 

An instrument was produced and handed first to the old man, who 
played an Irish planxty of Carolan’s, mad with fun and frolic. Af- 
terwards the fiddle was passed to Bryan, in whose hands it became 
the violin — 

“ That small sweet thing, 

Devised in love and fashioned cunningly 
Of wood and strings.” 

Bryan touched it with the skill of an artist, and in a little theme of 
Beethoven made it give forth the soul of the musician. Marcella, 
whose nerves were already overstrung, was almost wrought to tears 
by the divine tenderness of bis music. Over and above Beethoven 
the cry of the Wild Geese was in her heart. “ Tell him to go a trip 
to see Amerikay,” said Mike. Was he, too, destined to be a wanderer 
far from the land he loved so well, or be sacrificed to some cruel al- 
ternative? She could not dare to sleep without delivering her warn- 
ing, and wrote a few words in pencil on a page in her pocket-book, 
while Mrs. Kilmorey and the priest were talking, and Brian was 
still playing. 

As they separated for the night she put it into his hand unob- 
served, and, greatly astonished, he held it folded in his palm until 
he found himself alone. 


MARCELLA A LANDLORD. 


73 


Having read the few urgent words in Marcella’s large, rather un- 
formed handwriting, he looked at first more glad than alarmed, 
then asked himself was it fancy or conceit that led him to discern 
an accent of piteous fear for his safety in the imaginary voice in 
which the written message was delivered. Would she greatly care 
if he were hurt? If so, it were almost good to he hurt. 

He remembered her sudden fit of dejection after quitting Mike, 
and the suggestion that anxiety for him had caused it, came to him 
with so much sweetness that it was some time before he could cease 
to dwell on it and give his attention to the warning itself. 

Then, “I am not surprised,” he reflected, “but I stand my ground. 
The danger does not blow from the quarter Mike apprehends. It 
may be that it were better if it did. But at all events I stand my 
ground.” 

Then, studying again the simple words on the scrap of paper in 
his hand, he forgot the cause of his getting them in the joy of their 
possession. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

MARCELLA A LANDLORD. 

For some time after this Marcella’s hands were full of business. 
What with taking measures to make Crane’s Castle habitable, and 
continuing her visits to her tenantry in company with Father Daly 
or Kilmorey, or both, she had little idle time. With a few bold as- 
sured words Bryan had almost set her mind at rest on the subject of 
danger to him, so that she was able to give at least a good part of 
her thoughts to putting her affairs in order, and laying a foundation 
for a future happy understanding between her people and herself. 

Gradually the poor dwellers on the green spots between the bogs 
and the barren stretches of mountain came to look for the visits of 
the smiling lady, who was “that kind, you wouldn’t think she was 
a lady at all,” and the pinched, weather-beaten faces would brighten 
at her approach, and the little brown barelegged children in their 
scanty garments of crimson homespun flannel would come capering 
like wild goats along the rocks to meet her. By degrees all the 
cases of hardship, the evictions and rent-raisings, were laid before 
her. Sitting at the cabin fire while the old granny in the corner 
smoked the tobacco the lady had brought, and Marcella herself 
helped to drink the tea which had been transferred from her own 
pocket to the little brown teapot on the hearth, she became acquaint- 
ed with all the ills to which these suffering creatures had been sub- 
jected, that her rent-roll might show an increase rather than a fall- 
ing off in wealth. Since Mrs. O’Kelly, five years ago, had shaken 
the dust of Distresna off her feet, offended at some complaints that 
had been made of what she sincerely considered her most benignant 
rule, and departed from Crane’s Castle never to return, the agent 


74 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


had been gradually screwing up the rents, trying to extract a lit- 
tle more, and a little more money out of hog and rock; and at the 
same time the seasons had been wet and cruel, turf had not been 
dried, and potatoes had failed, and a good part of the hard-earned 
rent, earned in America, England, anywhere, had been spent on the 
insufficient yellow meal on which the defaulters all but starved. 
There had been several evictions within the year before Mrs. O’Kel- 
ly’s death. In some cases the ruined families had disappeared from 
the country, in others they lived among their neighbors, while a son 
or daughter had gone as a sort of advanced guard to America to 
try to earn some money which might get them reinstated in their 
holdings. A few dwellings better than ordinary, showing signs of 
improvement at the cost of much labor, were pointed to as warn- 
ings to the wise man not to improve. Out of these the rash and 
adventurous improvers had been cast to repent of their folly, the 
young in exile, the old in the poor-house. 

As Marcella listened and observed, her heart was stirred, and she 
remembered that she also was a child of the people. If through her 
mother she was descended from the gentry who had so mismanaged 
and misruled these poor, through her father she was one with them. 
The power to alleviate their wants and their miseries had been won- 
derfully placed in her hands; the will should not be wanting. With 
unfailing patience she studied their various cases, learned their views, 
perceived and appreciated their temptations. 

With the landlord on the one side, irritating and crushing them, 
and on the other the secret societies pressing them to put themselves 
in the hands of a power that declared itself able and willing to right 
them, was it surprising if the more desperate among them fell blind- 
ly into complicity with crime? The only wonder was that the bulk 
of them kept free from it. Can one be astonished that the Fenian’s 
promise of a warfare that must bring glorious changes over the face 
of the country, should have enthralled the more sturdy and fearless 
of the youth, taught them to shoulder a gun, and enticed them to 
the secret meeting-place in the heart of the moonlit glen? On these 
things Marcella mused and pondered. If Bryan, as a lad, had been 
inspired to rush out from his mother’s side in his comfortable home, 
to strive to right the wronged, how much more those whose aged 
parents or little children were wasting before their eyes in the very 
grip of the wrong? 

Well, she would have no more Fenians, no more slaves, no more 
starvation, no more eviction. Her rent-roll should be to her but as 
a calendar of good deeds done. In one spot of Ireland, at least, 
prosperity as great as the poverty of the land would permit should 
reign. To Crane’s Castle should come all who needed help or com- 
fort. With their babies in her arms, their children about her knees, 
she would know how to talk to the mothers and fathers. 

In the mean time the people were full of anxiety about their new 
landlord, aud Marcella was often questioned as to whether she had 
heard anything about that person; or, more important still, anything 
of the appointment of an agent. They had learned that Crane’s 


MARCELLA A LANDLORD. 


75 


Castle was getting cleaned up and put to rights, and this looked as 
though the agent, if not the lady herself, intended to live on the 
property. 

In all probability, they thought, the rents would be raised, as a 
first step, by the new management. How many of those who now 
clung with passion to their hearths and homes, poor and humble as 
they might be, would, in a few weeks hence, have received the order 
to go forth! an order which to many was a veritable death-sentence. 
Marcella could tell them nothing, only begged them to hope. To 
ask them to be patient was unnecessay. Nowhere in the world is 
such Christian patience to be met with as in an Irish cabin. 

In the mean time Crane’s Castle was getting thoroughly swept 
and garnished. The cobwebs of years were blown away, the mouldy 
old furniture was polished up, pretty new things arrived from Dub- 
lin to make the place more comfortable and habitable than it had 
ever been before, and at last it was ready for Marcella to take pos- 
session. A lady of good family, one of the many Irish ladies whose 
slender income, being derived from a mortgage on land, has van- 
ished of late years, had accepted the position of companion to the 
heiress of Distresna, and was ready at any moment to obey a sum- 
mons to the spot. All things were in proper trim when Marcella 
unfolded her little plan for the conclusion of the play she had been 
enacting for the benefit of her people. 

On a bright Sunday morning in July it was announced by Father 
Daly, from the altar in his chapel at Ballydownvalley, that the new 
landlord, who, as they knew, was a lady, a relative of the late Mrs. 
O’Kelly, would meet her tenants at Crane’s Castle on a certain day 
in the following week, and would receive their rents in person and 
hear their complaints, if they had any to make. Now the people 
upon whom this news fell like a shock had never known Marcella 
by any other name than Miss Marcella, and had not the faintest 
suspicion that she was a personage of importance. A moaning 
murmur from the women at their prayers greeted the announce- 
ment, groups stood late in the chapel-yard that day discussing the 
expected event, and old and young returned to their cabins in the 
afternoon with a load on their hearts. They had not a doubt among 
them that the new state of things would be worse than the old, and 
even Father Daly’s silence as to the lady’s character and intentions 
had an ominous meaning for them. If he had been able to say a 
good word for the new landlord he would surely have done so. All 
his sermon was about patience and confidence in God; just such a 
sermon as he had always preached to them when the turf would not 
dry, and the potatoes failed, or when anybody died of the slow hun- 
ger, or was evicted. 

On the appointed day they were all in motion on the road to 
Crane’s Castle, that is, all the heads of families, or the member of a 
family who was to act as spokesman for the rest. Crane’s Castle 
stood about a mile from the lake of Inisheen, with its face to seaward 
and a mountain at its back, a quaint, ancient building with thick 
gray walls and small, deep-set windows, and a general look about it 


76 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


as if the crows had been building in its chimneys ever since they 
came out of the Ark. In-doors a mighty change was already notice- 
able, a few richly-colored rugs on the tiles of the great square vault- 
like hall, and a fire burning on the hearth to consume the damps 
within and without, gave promise of a cheerful interior. Faded and 
mildewed carpets and curtains had gone out with the dust accumu- 
lated upon them, and the once mouldy and gloomy reception-rooms 
had been so draped and painted and garnished as to have become 
places to linger in for comfort and repose. In the drawing-room 
sat Marcella’s chaperon, a majestic and handsome woman, who plied 
her embroidery-needle with the air of a fallen empress, and never 
failed to remind all comers that she was “one of the O’Donovans.” 
The last of a dynasty whose subjects had revolted and dethroned 
her could not have alluded to her misfortunes with more dignified 
bitterness than did Miss O’Donovan when speaking of the failure of 
her annuity, which had been drawn from a charge upon land. As 
her case was indeed a hard one, and there are many of such, she was 
treated with the utmost tenderness by her friends, and Marcella, in 
nominally accepting her services, was prepared to accord her all 
that unhesitating homage to which her pride and her poverty laid 
urgent and constant claim. 

Of the library, where until now “ The Peerage,” Burke’s “ Landed 
Gentry,” and innumerable bound volumes of the sporting papers 
had been the chief ornaments of the shelves, Marcella had chosen to 
make her own particular sanctum, and here she awaited her tenants 
on that day in July. All the earliest arrived were invited to take 
seats in the hall, while the first man was called by name to the pres- 
ence of the landlord. 

They knew that library door too well, having never entered it 
without fear in their hearts. The first who went in now was quick- 
ly aware of a change in the place. There were, as of old, the two 
high-set narrow windows at the end of the room, but in their recesses 
and catching the sunshine stood deep-colored jars full of tall yel- 
low flag-lilies, filling the niches with brilliance and light. In the 
shadow between the russet-tinted curtains a lady was sitting. Her 
head was bent down, and the heavy-hearted tenant could not see her 
face. The room was full of flowers, the furniture was the same and 
yet changed; the poor man gazed round the place with a vague won- 
der in his mind as to whether the new landlord was as different 
from the old as this beautiful apartment was the reverse of its for- 
mer gloomy self. Then he looked again, and saw Marcella smiling 
at him from the shadows between the golden lilies in the windows. 

“You see it is me whom you have got for your landlord, and you 
must make the best of me. Now state your case, that we may get 
to business,” she said; and Father Daly here appeared rubbing his 
hands and laughing with delight. 

“John Lynch,” he said, “confess that you are sold. Go and tell 
your neighbors what a terrible landlord has come to Distresna.” 

In a few minutes the room was full of the people pressing round 
Marcella, begging to touch her hand, pouring out their cead mille 


MARCELLA A LANDLORD. 


'77 


failthes and blessings on her head. It was long before the excite- 
ment had subsided and business was begun. All that day and many 
days after the new landlord sat in her place between the yellow lil- 
ies, making a picture in the shadowy old room, listening to the cases 
laid before her, distributing justice, promising help, lowering rents, 
and granting new leases. After all the business was done her rent- 
roll was considerably disfigured, but her heart was more at rest. 
AYere not these poor, overjoyed creatures her actual children? Had 
they not been given bodily into her charge? Had not Providence 
ordained that enough sustenance should be derived from the laud 
for her and for them also? Should she store up all the grain for her- 
self and leave nothing for them but the husks? Forbid it, righteous 
God! 

Her next step was to invite the tenantry, men, women, and chil- 
dren, all who could come, to a house - warming at Crane’s Castle. 
The great barn and out-houses were cleared for dancing and deco- 
rated with heather. Pipers were hired, and a supper was prepared 
such as the tenants of Distresna had never seen before. Invitations 
were sent to the gentry also to be present at the people’s ball ; but 
few of them were at home, and still fewer cared to come. Already 
many heads were shaken over Miss O’Kelly’s strange beginnings 
with her tenantry. But what could be expected of her, seeing she 
had identified herself from the first with those queer half -Fenian 
Kilmoreys? Yet the dance went on as merrily as though under the 
patronage of a queen. Marcella danced with her tenants and helped 
them with her own hands to the good cheer she had prepared for 
them. The children undertook to teach her the step of the Irish 
jig, while Father Daly looked on and applauded, and the crowd 
stood back to watch the performance with delight. 

When the step was learned she danced it with Mike, the mountain 
lad, who had frightened her with his unnecessary warning. 

“ Mike,” she said, when the jig was finished, “ that was all a mis- 
take— I mean your fear tha-t there was harm in store for Mr. Kil- 
morey.” 

“ I hope so, miss — I hope so,” said Mike, but his beaming looks of 
pride and joy at being danced with by “herself” vanished like the 
sun under a cloud. “All the same, there’s people here to-night that 
I do not like the looks of. There’s a party in the hay-loft, and bad 
scran to the dance they have danced, nothing but cliattin’ under 
their breath and dark looks for anybody else that goes near them. 
One of them’s a stranger in these parts, and the others are no credit 
to them they belong to. But whisht, miss, whisht! Sure we ben’t 
to take notice o’ them. It’s Mike will keep watch for himsel’ and 
yoursel’, an’ if danger comes back on the wind, he’ll run before ev- 
erything else with the news of it.” 


78 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM. 

For about a month after her establishment at Crane’s Castle and 
formal meeting with her tenantry, Marcella was as happy as a bird. 
Even that cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, the threatened danger 
to Kilmorey, was not allowed to cast a shadow in her way. She 
saw Bryan almost every day. Either he had a message from his 
mother, begging her to come and spend a day and night at Inisheen, 
or he wanted to tell her about some tenant who was deserving or un- 
deserving of her attention, or he had thought of a new flower which 
would grow well in her garden, or he must help her to arrange a 
lot of books which he had bought for her on her library shelves. 
They spent many happy hours together, becoming more and more 
necessary to each other’s existence, till that day seemed lost in which 
they had not met. Marcella was no longer the thin, fragile girl of 
the Liberties. The line of her oval cheek had filled into a perfect 
curve, her dark eyes had got a laughing expression, the carnations 
of health were blooming in her face as she flitted about her castle 
and garden, ordering her affairs and planning her improvements. In 
the evenings she devoted herself to study. Her friends had not yet 
discovered how wof ully ignorant she was. She would work in secret 
so that they might never discover the full extent of that ignorance. 

Taking counsel on this subject with her lady companion, she was 
surprised to find, by degrees, how very little book education it takes 
to make a lady. Having become assured through her own observa- 
tion that an industrious young woman may easily, in the leisure 
hours of a couple of years, acquire all and more than the knowledge 
which ordinary girls gain during their years at school, she became 
less anxious on the score of her deficiencies — only went to work with 
a will. 

Her household management gave her plenty of occupation. De- 
termined to be a lady in every sense of the word, she provided her- 
self with books on the subject of nice household arrangement, and 
when difficulties came in her way there was Mrs. Kilmorey to be ap- 
plied to. Having deliberately reduced her income within the limits 
set to it by her conscience, she ordered her establishment according- 
ly, greatly to the disgust and disappointment of “ The O’Donovan,” 
as Father Daly slyly called her chaperon, who held that the three 
neat maids and one old butler were a ridiculously small staff of in- 
door servants for the maintenance of the dignity of the ancient 
O’Kellys. On this subject Miss Julia O’Flaherty agreed with Miss 
O’Donovan. It was true that the menage at Mount Ramshackle was 


THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM. 


79 


now dependent for comfort on one domestic of a somewhat rude 
description, but then it was partly the glory of keeping trains of idle 
retainers that had helped to bring her family to its present state of 
ignoble dependence. 

“When we could do it, we did it,” said Miss Julia, as if that set- 
tled the matter and cleared the O’Flahertys from all present or fut- 
ure reproach. 

‘ ‘ But,” said Marcella, “ I have no use for a train of servants. Half 
of the castle is shut up, and Miss O’Donovan and I do not often en- 
tertain company. We do not hunt, and at present we are very com- 
fortable as we are.” 

She had nobler schemes for the use of her spare money than could 
be included in the expenditure of an unnecessarily showy establish- 
ment. But of this she said nothing. 

“Hunting is not all selfish extravagance,” said Miss O’Donovan. 
“When my dear father was alive he always kept the hounds, and 
gave a great deal of employment by so doing.” 

“ So did papa,” said Miss O’Flaherty. “Always, until his affairs 
got into trouble.” 

“I don’t object to hunting, except in excess,” said Marcella, and 
then paused, reluctant to risk giving offence by explaining what 
were the thoughts that came to her on this subject. To Miss O’Don- 
ovan, whose affairs had not been directly affected by the hunt, she 
was able to speak more openly when Miss O’Flaherty had returned 
to Mount Ramshackle and the uninterrupted contemplation of for- 
mer greatness. 

“It seems to me, ’’said Marcella, “ that though people give em- 
ployment while they are hunting their prosperity to death, they do 
on the whole very little good, considering the paralysis that comes 
upon all their faculties for usefulness after the play is played out 
and their prosperity is no more. Sport is a good thing, but bank- 
ruptcy not so good. Where are the people who were benefited by 
that excessive expenditure? To pay the mortgages Mr. O’Flaherty 
put on his property from time to time, he is obliged almost to starve, 
and he has not a penny to bestow on any one. His tenants are rack- 
rented, and the money goes to usurers. Look at it as I will, I be- 
lieve my own plan will prove the best. If I part with my gold I 
shall hope to see something that I have bought with it, drained 
lands, or well-built houses in which my people can afford to live, or 
crops raised on improved seed, or flourishing fisheries, or the work- 
ing of cottage industries on my property. If I live to see myself 
impoverished in my home I shall at least look out of my windows 
at a fairer prospect than lies before them now.” 

To all of which Miss O’Donovan replied with a sigh that it was a 
thousand pities Miss O’Kelly had fallen so young into the hands of 
the Kilmoreys. 

“ She has been caught by the radical wave, my dear, ’’she said to 
Miss O’Flaherty afterwards. Miss O’Donovan read the papers a 
good deal, and was fond of a sounding phrase. “I feel sure she 
has a democratic strain in her somewhere. All the blood in her 


80 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


veins is not of the royal blue of the O’Kellys. However, in my fall- 
en estate I am obliged to be patient with her, and I must say she is 
very kind and attentive, and aware of what is due to me. I could 
not be more comfortable; all my little luxuries provided for me, just 
as in my own dear home. And though I would like a little more 
style,” etc. 

Miss O’Flaherty, who, since she was no longer an heiress presump- 
tive, had become less unaccommodating in her views and ways than 
formerly, proved by her frequent visits that the comforts to be en- 
joyed within Crane’s Castle under Marcella’s management weighed 
with her, also, against the wrongheadedness of its mistress. 

Mr. O’Flaherty, too, soon showed a keen appreciation of Miss 
O’Kelly’s charms as a hostess, and would often drive across country 
in his shabby little gig, all that remained of the various equipages 
that had used to roll in and out of the now lop-sided gates of Mount 
Ramshackle, to pay his respects to the lady of Distresna. As he 
went he would muse on the advantage to him, and of course to her 
and the country at large, which would result from a union of the 
houses of O’Flaherty and O’Kelly. It was evident that this girl had 
a great notion of making those who lived with her comfortable, but 
she was lamentably wanting in perception of what was expected of 
her as the representative of an ancient and distinguished, not to say 
royal, family. All this he could teach her. No one was better fitted 
for such a task than himself. Then hovr pleasant it would be of an 
evening to see such a sweet young face smiling at him through the 
steam of innumerable glasses of punch, besides the comfort to his 
mind of knowing that dear Julia would have a companion at home 
when he was abroad on unavoidable business or pleasure. 

All things considered, he thought it would work very well, and so, 
persistently but cautiously, for the girl had evidently a will of her 
own, laid plans for the prosecution of his suit. 

He was not the only gentleman of the county who discovered that 
the lady of Distresna would make a desirable helpmate. The rumor 
that Mrs. O’Kelly’s heiress was a furious radical woman who had 
spoken on platforms about woman’s right’s, and walked about the 
country in a jacket like a man’s, and with a shillalah in her hand, 
ceased to obtain credit. The gilded youth of Connaught having 
caught glimpses of her blooming face whirling past on the mountain 
roads on a car, or having lingered for a sight of her coming out of 
the mountain chapel on Sundays in her white frock and gypsy bon- 
net, began to blame the women of their families for neglecting to 
make closer acquaintance with her. By-and-by she began to receive 
frequent visits from them, and to find herself overwhelmed with in- 
vitations to ride, fish, hunt, and dine in the society of her compeers 
in the county. And Marcella, being no way disinclined for good 
neighborship, did a little of all that was required of her, when she 
could manage to find time. It was part of her dream of usefulness 
to gain as much as possible of the sympathy of all classes, but she 
laughed in her heart when “The O’Donovan ” would point out to her 
that this or that gentleman had designs on her hand. 


THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM. 


81 


“ I dare say they all think me a very had manager, and would like 
to put me to rights,” she said, laughing, and ignoring all the ardent 
looks and tender words which she could not but know were a tribute 
to her personal attractions. “ However, I am in love with my own 
position at present, and mean to keep it.” 

Nevertheless she was pleased to see that her eyes had grown 
bright, and that there were tints of the rose coming and going under 
them in her rounded cheeks. She chose herself pretty dresses and 
wore them with grace. Why should she not try to be as beautiful 
as she could in one pair of eyes which were often turned on her with 
an expression she could not read, but which always made her heart 
beat faster? In her quiet leisure moments, shut in her own room, 
or sitting in a rocky chair hidden among the cliffs, she would pon- 
der the old subject of wonderment as to what that danger could be 
which lurked round the footsteps of Bryan Kilmorey. At such 
times she would take out the ring which she always wore round her 
neck, look at it and finger it long, and live over again the night 
when she had sheltered and shielded him from she knew not what 
— would she ever know from what? She had reason to think that 
Kilmorey had never suspected her identity with the girl of the Lib- 
erties who had saved him. On more than one occasion he had hint- 
ed to her of probable trouble for him in the future, in consequence 
of his own rash action in the past, but neither by word nor look of 
his could she guess that he knew of any bond that had existed be- 
tween them before he had met her that night at the entrance to St. 
Patrick’s Hall. 

And in the mean time Kilmorey was well aware that, in spite of 
his resolution to spare the woman he loved the misery of being con- 
nected with him in his coming trial, he had again and again con- 
veyed to Marcella the forcible assurance that he loved her. He could 
not see her without betraying in a hundred ways the secret which 
ought never to be told. He admitted to himself painfully that he 
ought to rise up out of this insane dream of impossible happiness 
which had taken him on the very verge of the tragedy of his life, 
turn his back upon her home and his home, and determine to see 
her no more. So serene, so happy as she was with her projects and 
her people, why could he not leave her among them in peace, re- 
moving himself and the shadow of his misfortunes out of the sun- 
shine on her path? She might be grieved and surprised for a time 
at his hasty cutting of the tie with which he felt he had already 
bound her, he was not unselfish enough to hope that she would feel 
no regret; but, after a little interval, would she not thank him for 
his action, and arrive at a clear understanding of what it meant? 

Distracted with these thoughts, he yet waited from day to day, 
putting off the difficult moment; till at last it was suddenly made 
known to him that circumstances were about to lift him out of the 
danger of doing a cruel wrong in snatching at a joy which at his 
touch must instantly and inevitably link itself with misery for an- 
other. 

6 


82 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE BOLT FALLS. 

It was a brilliant summer night ; a round golden moon had risen 
out of the Atlantic and burned its pale lamp high in the dark 
heavens over Crane’s Castle, which, with the surrounding bogs and 
mountains, had grown weird and ghostly under the yellow - green 
light lying upon its silent face like a spell of enchantment. 

Marcella had entertained a dinner-party that evening, and her 
guests were gone. Bryan Kilmorey had been invited, but had not 
come. It sometimes happened that, having declined an invitation 
to a company dinner, Bryan would arrive just as the last of the 
diners bad departed, and remain an hour with Marcella and Miss 
O’Donovan. He had been out walking, and had looked in just to 
make sure that Miss O’Donovan was not displeased with him for 
declining to appear at table. He had brought a book, a branch of 
heather with a particularly lovely bloom, or news of somebody who 
was sick or hungry, or a message from his mother. Such visits in- 
cluded about the happiest hours of Marcella’s at present delightful 
existence. 

But on this particular night he had not come. Marcella lingered 
in the hall in her white evening dress, and at last stepped out of the 
ponderous old hall door with its pillars of black Galway marble, and 
down the wide steps flanked by open urns also of black marble, the 
basins of which she had found, on her coming to the place, overflow- 
ing with rain and slime, and had filled with the splendor of bloom- 
ing azaleas. 

There were several things in her mind which she wanted to say to 
Kilmorey, and above all things she was eager to know that he was 
safe. She had had a painful dream the night before, in which he 
and she were again in the old house in Weaver’s Square together, 
and his enemies had broken open the closet door and killed him be- 
fore her eyes. Looking steadily through the faint sallow light across 
field, bush, and stream, to the rocky road above the sea, she saw no 
moving thing; then turned her tired eyes in the other direction, and 
where the light was most intense upon one spot between herself and 
some low wet reefs on the shore, she espied a dark object fluttering 
towards her. At first she took it to be one of those wide-winged 
cranes from which the Castle took its name, and which haunted 
about the marshy places around it and the bits of low-lying beach 
between the cliffs in front of it. However, she soon perceived that 
this was no bird, but the figure of a man running with his head 


THE BOLT FALLS. 


83 


down, ducking into all the shadowy places as if to hide himself even 
from the eye of the moon, and growing larger and more distinct to 
her vision each time he of necessity darted across an open track of 
light. 

Mechanically she hurried in the direction of the flying figure, and 
in the shadow of a clump of thorn-bushes, close to where her pri- 
vate grounds adjoined a reeking marsh reflecting the moonlight in a 
hundred pools, she came face to face with Mike of the mountains, 
who stopped running when he saw her, and flung himself panting 
on the ground at her feet. 

“Ob, miss, it’s you. Sure I thought it was the banshee, an’ all 
was no use. Where’s himsel’? Tell him for the love o’ God to run 
for his life. The polis is afther him !” 

“Himsel ' ” meant Kilmorey, as Marcella knew. 

“The police! Are you mad?” cried Marcella, in a tone of ridi- 
cule, but her heart grew cold and her limbs trembled. 

“ Sorra mad, my lady. I heard it all, an’ I ran like a hare. Bad 
scran to the bit o’ me that isn’t eyes and ears since I knew there was 
somethin’ cornin’ on him. He isn’t at Inisheen. They had said he 
had gone for a walk, an’ was maybe here. The polls ’ll be down 
on him in the middle o’ the night, an' intend for to take him in his 
bed.” 

Marcella put her hand to her head and struggled for presence of 
mind. That night in the Liberties was vividly before her like a bad 
dream of which this was the reading. Yet her common-sense told 
her she should not act on such wild information without knowing 
what it meant. 

“Stand up, Mike, and look at me. What can the police want 
with Mr Kilmorey?” 

‘ ‘ They want him for the murder of Misther Gerald Ffrench Ffont. 
An’ sure he never did the like. An’ if he did, wasn’t it the widow 
and the orphan he was doin’ it for?” said Mike, doggedly. “An’ 
thim that did it themsel’s anyway has informed on him and set the 
polis afther him. An’ it’s hanged he’ll be if he doesn’t fly for his 
life!” 

Marcella grasped a friendly branch of the thorn-tree and steadied 
herself. She must not die, or swoon, or fall, as any fool might do, 
while there was time to act. 

“Listen to me, Mike. I shall never forget this goodness of yours. 
Fly off now and search for Mr. Kilmorey along the sea-shore. Do 
not rest till you overtake him if he is there. I will go myself to In- 
isheen. One of us may find him. Now, Jose no time. Off with 
you!” 

Mike needed no second bidding, and the next instant was out of 
sight. 

Then Marcella cleared the space between her and the house al- 
most as the bird flies. In the hall she turned back and looked in at 
the drawing-room door. 

“Iam going to my room, Miss O'Donovan,” she said, in her usual 
tones, “Gpod-night.” 


84 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


In her own room she put on a long water-proof coat which cov- 
ered her from chin to heel, and threw a dark shawl over her head. 

“If any one meets me on the road even at this hour, I shall be 
taken for a countrywoman, ” she reflected, and passed swiftly down- 
stairs, prepared to" account for her conduct if any person should 
meet her. But she saw no one till she got clear across the fields at 
the back of the house and out by short-cuts on the little frequented 
high-road that led to Inisheen. 

Then she ran as she had never run before, and as she could not 
have believed it in her power to run. The ground flew from under 
her feet, and yet it seemed to her that years must have passed before 
she stepped into the boat and began to paddle herself across the lake. 
Fortunately the broad deep shadow of the mountain was cast upon 
the water by the moonlight, so that she was not likely to be seen, 
even if the family in the little cottage above the shore, who kept 
Bryan’s horses and looked after his boat, had not been sound asleep 
since nine o’clock. 

She reached the island, and, creeping round the house in the shad- 
ows, peered in at the windows. She must, if possible, see Bryan 
alone, and escape observation from every eye but his. Through a 
chink in Mrs. Kilmorey’s shutter she saw the mother reading in her 
own room, where she had retired for the night. There were lights 
also in the servants’ bedroom windows. The drawing-room win- 
dows were open, so was the hall door, but no trace of the master 
was to be seen. What if he were rambling across the hills and were 
to meet his pursuers, face to face, unwarned? She hurried wildly 
round the little lawns, and among the flower-beds and furze-bushes. 

‘ ‘ Bryan, Bryan ! Oh, God, he is not here !” broke from her in tones 
that came unmistakably from the depths of her heart. And Kil- 
morey heard her. 

The sound came to him like a whisper of the wind before he saw 
her or heard her step, and strangely enough the voice did not seem 
to him like that of the young mistress of Crane’s Castle. Its vibrat- 
ing accent of tribulation carried him back, startled, to the Liberties 
of Dublin, and when the slight figure wrapped in dark draperies, 
and the pale face gleaming out of the folds of the loose shawl, passed 
him the next minute, he believed that it was the girl of the Liberties 
who had appeared before him. 

He stepped out of the shadows that had hidden him, and said, 

“Does any one want me? Did I hear my name?” 

Then Marcella turned and he recognized her. “Miss O’Kelly — 
Marcella!” he exclaimed, while the tone and the words still in his 
ear, and which must have been hers, thrilled again gladly through 
his memory. 

“I have come to tell you something,” she said in a whisper. 
“You must fly from this place at once, and get to Queenstown by 
to-morrow. You must sail for America. You have not a moment 
to lose.” 

“ Why?” said Kilmorey, calmly, looking at her eager face raised 
to his in complete unconsciousness of self. He was thinking not so 


THE BOLT FALLS. 


85 


much of this crisis of his danger as of the delightful though deplor* 
able assurance that he was beloved by her. 

“Because — my God, how am I to say it? Because the police will 
be here directly searching for you. There is some terrible mistake. 
They are going to seize you for murder; and they must not do it.” 

“But they must do it,” he said, in a tone of quiet sadness and 
without stirring an inch. “ I have no intention of flying like a man 
conscious of guilt. This is a misfortune that must be met in the 
face.” 

“No, no, it need not,” said Marcella, imploringly. “If enemies 
have made a case against you, why need you give yourself into 
their hands?” 

“ Has Mike told you so? I dare say he has his news from good 
authority, but I have long known all this without his warnings. I 
have been w T ell aware that a case was being made up against me, 
and I have stood my ground. What would life be worth to an ex- 
iled man who knew himself to be remembered in his own country 
as a criminal who had fled from justice? So I have chosen to stay 
in my place, and this moment does not find me unprepared.” 

Marcella, listening, had grown cold to the heart. She had no ad- 
miration at that moment for his courage, felt no delight in his high 
resolution. Woman-like, she would save him at any cost. A slight 
breeze stirred the leaves near them, and with a start and a terrified 
glance towards the lake, she put her hand on his arm and drew him 
deeper behind the screen of the trees. 

Kilmorey could then hardly restrain his great longing to take the 
bold little hand, so strong in its eagerness to protect, and hold it 
fast in his own, but he controlled the desire as an impulse of mad- 
ness. How should a man about to be seized for murder dare to 
speak of love to a woman? Let him be brave, in this as well as in 
that which was less difficult. Without any noticeable change in his 
manner, he said to her, 

“ As I live under suspicion, I prefer to stand my trial. I want to 
explain this to you while I still have time. To fly would be in my 
eyes equal to a confession of guilt. To submit to trial means, let 
us hope, to be cleared from the shadow of crime and disgrace. 
Could any friend ” — his voice broke a little — “could you wish to see 
me dishonored, even if safe?” 

A moan broke from Marcella, and she covered her face with her 
hands, then suddenly raised eyes again full of burning pain. 

“You are too brave, too bold,” she said, “and you exaggerate. 
Dishonor or disgrace could not touch you. It is utterly impossible. 
Time will clear up this mystery whatever it may be. No man is 
bound to act as you are doing. Oh, for God’s sake, for — ” 

She could not say “for my sake,” though the appeal was almost 
on her lips. He seemed to catch the words, though they were not 
spoken, and yet it was only her peculiar gesture as she turned away 
a moment with an impulse of dignity that supplied them to him. 
As she did so the impetuous motion of her hand, the swift proud 
turn of her head, struck him strangely, and he cried, 


86 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“Heavens, how you bring another scene before me!” 

“ Yes,” she answered, suddenly aware that it might now be better 
if all that had ever passed between them were clearly understood. 
Was not her first interview with him a part of the drama that was 
now being enacted? She paused, dismayed, and doubtful of how to 
reveal what she felt she ought to make known. Then, before he 
had time to speak further, she asked, rapidly, 

‘ ‘ What is the chief evidence? Who are the false witnesses against 
you?” 

“ I suspect the principal will be informers, the creatures of a de- 
based Fenianism which has sworn my destruction as a seceder from 
its ranks. Unfortunately, there is some circumstantial evidence 
against me, and everything will depend, I imagine, on the weakness 
or strength of that. There exists one person whose testimony — if 
she can be found, and should be obliged to give evidence against 
me — would be more damaging than all the rest, and might ruin 
me — ” 

“ Who is she?” asked Marcella, in an eager whisper. 

Kilmorey passed his hand over his ej r es and forehead before he 
looked again at her white face, upraised as if out of a consuming 
flame of anguish and tenderness. 

“She is the girl whom I have so often told you you resembled, 
whom you look like now ; but she had only known me an hour and 
could not feel for me like this. She saved me once — ” 

“And now she would save you again. Oh, how strangely you 
have known me and yet not known me! It was I who opened the 
door to you that night, I who sent you out again when the danger 
was past. Look at this ring and see if I do not speak the truth! I 
have not spoken before, because — because I had no right to know 
your secrets, but now that this moment has come, I must tell you 
what I am. Marcella Grace was the girl who sheltered you in the 
Liberties. If she had stayed in her poverty she would never have 
borne witness against you, not if they had killed her. Do you think 
she is likely to betray you now ?” 

She stopped, choked with her passionate utterance. A great joy 
at the fact that she held the key of the case against him in her own 
tightly-clinched hand had come to her vividly across the misery of 
her fear for him; and as Kilmorey looked at her face suddenly illu- 
minated with smiles, the strangeness of her communication was al- 
most overlooked by him in the peculiar feeling with which be reali- 
zed what her position had been towards him from the first moment 
of their meeting. His mind could not now rest on details; he only 
perceived how her extraordinary statement bound her more ancl 
more closely to himself. But in the same moment he decided that 
he would not take advantage of her pity, given so freely to him 
from first to last. To open his own heart to her now would be to 
carry hers with him into that prison of which he hated to think. 

After a few moments of silence, during which he struggled for 
mastery over his will, he said, quietly, 

“This is a strange revelation, and yet it does not surprise me as 


THE BOLT FALLS. 


87 


much as it ought. You have always been associated in my mind 
with my first benefactress. Only for the impossibility, as it seemed 
to me — ” 

“Yet it was all so simple,” broke in Marcella. “Mrs. O’Kelly dis- 
covered me only a few days after — after that night. She did not 
want people to know in what scenes she had found me. Then both 
she and my father died, and I was transported here, as you know. 
It has all been extraordinary, but has happened as naturally as could 
be. And the only matter it makes now is that it is I who hold that 
link in the false evidence which cowards are patching up against 
you. And they will never trace me here, and I will never speak. ” 

“I trust you may not be called upon,” he said — “ we will hope it 
may be so. And now let me ask you one question. Has no doubt 
of my part in that night’s transaction ever crossed your mind ? How 
do you know that I am free from guilt, that I was not blood-stained 
when I came to you like a thief in the dark?” 

“How do I know the sun shines? How do I know that God is 
good? Why do you ask me so tormenting a question? I saw you 
as you were that night ; I took you to be what you are. And why, oh 
why will you not now do as you then did?” 

“That is, fly? Because I will not repeat the mistake I then fell 
into. It seemed right and necessary then. It would be cowardice 
and folly now. I will not vex your ears with the story here. The 
world and you will know it soon enough.” 

“I do not want to hear it,” said Marcella. “I only know one 
hideous fact: that miscreants have got you into the toils of their 
vengeance and are trying to destroy you — ” 

“ Hush! hush! And so you have come all this way,” he said, his 
voice softening in spite of himself as he looked at her piteous white 
face and disordered locks; “you have travelled the road at night to 
put yourself again between me and harm. Oh, my dear, you ought 
not to have done it. Am I not a man and able to face my trial?” 

Here a faint sound made Marcella look round and utter a quick 
cry. Figures could be seen on the opposite shore, pushing the boat 
out upon the lake. 

“ They are coming, ”slie said, hoarsely — “they are coming.” She 
fell on her knees and bent her face almost to his feet. “If you have 
no pity for yourself,” she moaned, “have pity on your mother — have 
pity on me — ” 

Then he could bear it no longer. He lifted her in his arms and 
hid her face on his breast. 

“ Oh, my darling!” he said, “you ought to have let me go without 
this. I love you, Marcella — I love you ! But how can I dare to speak 
to you? How can a man under a charge for murder presume to ask 
a woman to be his wife? As yet I have committed no crime. If I 
take your promise now, I fear I shall indeed be criminal.” 

“ Then you shall be criminal,” she said, raising her head, and low- 
ering it again, with tears, “for you cannot refuse to take what I in- 
sist on giving to you.” 

Her excitement was calmed now that she could hold his hand and 


8 $ 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


feel that he was hers, to shield, to battle for, to live or die for. The 
prison walls could not entirely sjiut out her who had a right to bo 
near him, as a mother, almost as a wife has a right. She should bo 
close to him in whatever extremity he might be reduced to. Pain 
nor sorrow, mystery nor death, could not hinder her from knowing 
that she belonged to him. 

A few more eager words, and then, as they stood there, hand and 
hand, with cruel separation, perhaps death, drawing nearer every in- 
stant to place an inevitable bar between them, the thoughts of both 
hurried along too painfully for further utterance. Kilmorey kissed 
and stroked dumbly the brave, bowed head, and held fast the small, 
strong hand, whose fingers were interlaced with his, as if they would 
never let go in time or eternity. It was their one sacred moment, 
overlooked by none of the hard and pitiless eyes which would pres- 
ently open upon them and stare at their unhappiness. Their joy in 
each other, and the surpassing anguish of their misfortune, were both 
their own, a secret between themselves — only while a boat was cross- 
ing the lake under the shadow of yonder mountain, and no longer. 
To-morrow they should stand apart before the world, with the glare 
of its cruel light in their separate eyes, and the howl of its ready ex- 
ecration in their ears, which could be then no longer soothed by each 
other’s voices. 

The sound of steps and voices could now be heard quite near, and 
Kilmorey said, softly, 

“Dear love, we must go. If you love me, do not unman me. 
Where is your courage? Is this my Joan of Arc who confronted 
danger for me when I was no more to her than a stranger out of the 
streets?” 

Marcella answered nothing except by a tighter clasp of the hand 
she held, but raising her head mechanically, began to move by his 
side in the direction of the voices, like a woman walking in her sleep. 
Midway between the house and the rocks they met the party of po- 
lice, who, stepping forward when they saw him, arrested Bryan Kil- 
morey in the Queen’s name for the murder of Gerald Ffrench Ffont, 
on the 10th of January, in a Dublin street. 

Kilmorey received them as calmly as he should have done if they 
had come to confer a title on him. 

“ I will give you no trouble, my men,” he said, “ but I must ask you 
not to alarm a delicate lady, who is within doors; ” he choked over 
the words “my mother.” 

“Never fear, Misther Bryan,” said one of the local police who 
had accompanied the group from Dublin. “We’ll be as quiet as 
mice. And I ask your pardon, sir, for bein’ mixed up with this dis- 
graceful business. Of course we all know it’s a mistake.” 

“ Thank you, sergeant. It’s rather an awkward mistake for me,” 
said Bryan, quietly, as having begged Marcella to go before him into 
the house, lie saw her pass over the threshold. “ Now, if you walk 
about here while I make a few slight arrangements, I will join you 
again immediately. You needn’t be afraid to lose sight of me. I 
• could have kept out of your way if I had wished,” he added to the 


GOD IS GOOD. 


89 


men, who remained standing outside the house while he went in. He 
knocked at his mother’s bedroom door, entered, and after a few min- 
utes came out again, and passed to his own apartment. Returning 
quickly, equipped for a journey, he went back to the drawing-room", 
where Marcella stood motionless waiting for him. 

“My mother only knows I am called to Dublin on sudden busi- 
ness. I am forced to leave the rest to you,” he said, trying to speak 
with an air of good cheer; and then they made their farewell, hold- 
ing each other’s hands, and looking in each other’s eyes, across the 
bitter gulf that had already divided them. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

GOD IS GOOD. 

He had besought her not to come with him, even to the door, and 
she had obeyed him, and remained on the spot where he had left her, 
and where she had sunk on her knees, until a faint splash caught 
by her quick ear told her they had left the island. Then, wrapped 
in her dark cloak, she stole out and watched the boat to the oppo- 
site shore, and strained her eyes to see the last of the moving figures 
that reached the other side. 

After all that she went back into the house and softly closed and 
barred the door, and swathing herself in her wraps, lay her length on 
her face on Mrs. Kilmorey’s sofa. Now that action was no longer 
possible, she was, between fatigue and sorrow, like a person drugged, 
and unable longer to distinguish the sharp outlines of the horrors 
that pressed around her. Only one figure was distinctly present to 
her among the confused images of her brain — the figure of Bryan 
Kilmorey travelling along the road to Dublin, moving ever towards 
a prison, towards dishonor, perhaps towards death. Sometimes start- 
ing out of this haunted stupor, she walked about the room as if to 
keep pace with that terrible movement of his which she could not 
stop, now and again standing still to look at a small likeness of him 
on the wall, made long ago, when she was a little half- vagrant child 
running to the nuns’ school in the Liberties, the ardent countenance 
of a youth who knew no guile, the spirited face of the lad who had 
rushed, brave of soul, to drill for a dream-warfare in the silence of 
the lonely glen. Or she would handle reverently the books in which 
his name was written, or gaze long at his old cremona hanging mute 
against the wall, kissing humbly the bow with which his fingers had 
coaxed the music out of its heart, and out of her heart too. The 
next hour was spent on her knees beseeching Heaven for him, and 
between the gusts of her prayer her spirit looked back through the 
storm-clouds of the present to the first beginnings of her connection 
with him, to the moment when she hacUlooked in his face appealing 
to her for service, and been allowed to feel that in her poverty and 


90 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


weakness she could be useful to his manhood. She remembered 
the strange, sacred yearning with which she had after that looked 
on him almost as her child because of her service rendered to him 
and the conviction she had felt that he would again require help at 
her hands. What help could she give him now, except to be true 
to him, still to guard skilfully the secret she had kept for him all 
these months, to share the discredit which half if not all the world 
would now heap on him, and to sweeten for him, as far as a woman 
can by her love and fidelity, the suffering and degradation which a 
mysterious Providence appeared to have decreed that he should 
endure? 

So the night passed, and in the dewy air of the dawn, while the 
black mountains were turning purple, and the gold stars white, and 
the still lake was stirring in little freshets of waves round the island, 
she stole noiselessly out of the house, and bathed her face in the cool 
water, and smoothed her disordered locks, and sat on the rocks hop- 
ing that the morning breeze would remove some of the traces of the 
night’s agony, so that the mere sight of her might not scare the poor 
mother who had yet to learn from her lips in what direful ways the 
feet of a beloved son were set. With the rising of the sun an acces- 
sion of courage came to her. An emergency was at hand and she 
had got to meet it. She would try to behave like a creature with 
faith and purpose — faith in God and in him, purpose to rescue him 
from the darkness that had momentarily covered him. As soon as 
the servants were stirring in the house she returned there and re- 
plied calmly to the surprised looks and words of the old house- 
keeper. 

“Trouble has come on Mr. Bryan, Bridget, and I am here to tell 
his mother about it. He is gone to Dublin to deal with his enemies. 
You will know more of it by-and-by. Now take the mistress her 
breakfast, and hint nothing to her till she has had it. Afterwards I 
will go to her.” 

With frightened looks the woman did her bidding, and an hour 
later Marcella nerved herself for a difficult task, which must be done 
before news should come flying at random from some outer quarter. 

Mrs. Kilmorey was dressed and resting in her easy-chair at the 
open window before making the effort of moving into the drawing- 
room, when her door opened and Marcella appeared. 

“ My dear, what a delightfully early visit ! But how tired and 
agitated you look. You are wearying yourself out with these lucky 
tenants of yours.” 

Marcella took her hand and kissed it, a homage she was fond of 
paying to Bryan’s mother, and then dropped on her knees beside 
her, still holding the invalid’s frail hand. 

“Mother,” she said, softly, “ will you have me? Bryan has asked 1 
me to be his wife.” 

“ Will I have you? My very dear one! Have I not been longing" 
and praying for this? Thank Heaven for giving my boy the desires- 
of his heart!” and Mrs. Kilmorey folded the girl close to her. 

Marcella stifled an hysterical cry, and hiding her face on the moth- 


GOD IS GOOD. 


91 


er’s neck, tried to poise the sword with which she was to pierce the 
tender breast on which she leaned. But she could not do it. 

“Mother,” she began, again commanding her voice with a strong 
effort, “I will be very good to him, and if ever he is in trouble I 
will cling to him the more; and people do get into trouble in this 
world, mother; sometimes the best and noblest get the worst of it.” 

The suspicion of a sob caught her breath, and with quick alarm 
Mrs. Kilmorey changed her position and looked her in the face. 

“You and I have got to be good to him, and brave for him, moth- 
er, for he is in trouble— our Bryan is in trouble.” 

Mrs. Kilmorey relaxed her hold of the girl, and leaned back in her 
chair pallid and panting. 

“Bryan in trouble! What is it? Good God! have they shot him? 
My boy, my only son.” 

The sight of her fear and agony strengthened Marcella, who stood 
up and said, firmly, 

“Not so bad as that, mother. He is alive and well. But there is 
some horrid mistake, or some spite of an enemy at work. Some- 
body has implicated him in the shooting of Mr. Ffont last winter. 
Of course it is nonsense, and everybody will see that is so. I was 
very wrong to tell you in such a doleful manner. I have frightened 
you to death. Come, dear little mother; if you and I are not brave, 
what will people say? We will laugh at the whole thing. We will 
show them what fools they have made of themselves — ” 

To all of which Mrs. Kilmorey listened with fixed dreadful eyes, 
and only answered, 

“ Where is he?” 

“ I do not exactly know where he is this moment. He went away 
quite cheerfully last night. Come, mother, look up. Do not look 
like that or you will kill me — me, who am going to be his wife when 
he comes back.” 

“He was arrested?” 

“ But by his own will and consent. He was warned, and he would 
not go. He would rather prove his innocence before the world.” 

Mrs. Kilmorey did not stir. 

“Think what a hero he will be when he comes back, mother. 
Everybody will do honor to a man who has passed through such a 
trouble unhurt. His life will he inquired into, his virtues will be 
known, his good deeds done in secret will come to light. I declare, 
when I think of it, I could be glad that this thing has happened — 
that the world may know what a man is Bryan Kilmorey — ” Then, 
suddenly breaking down, “Oh, Bryan; oh, my love, my love!” she 
wailed, and sinking on her knees again, with her face in Mrs. Kil- 
morey’s lap, let loose the floods of her weeping; and the two women 
wept and clung together till both were exhausted. 

The poor little mother had at last to be carried back to her bed 
and left in the darkened room unable to speak more, only lifting her 
tired eyes now and then to the crucifix Marcella had held to her lips, 
and then hung on the wall where she could see it. And after that 
Marcella had to go through her day, without possibility of news, or 


92 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


opportunity for action of any kind, or the chance of any event hap- 
pening to break the terrible monotony of the long, cruel, smiling, 
summer hours. 

She had at least leisure to write to Bryan, comforting him as to 
his mother, and saying all that her love and compassion could find 
words to express, but when the letter was written, she remembered 
that she did not know to what prison he had been taken, and must 
wait for tidings. 

Towards evening the boat was seen crossing the lake, and, hurry- 
ing down to the rocks, she met Father Daly. 

“God is good, my child!” was the priest’s greeting, and in his 
eyes she saw that he knew all. “We know that God is good.” 

Marcella’s strength was spent; she tried to speak, but said noth- 
ing. 

“And strong,” went on Father Daly. “He is good and strong, 
stronger than prisons and falsehoods. Now, my child, you will say 
‘yes,’ whether you feel it or not.” 

“ Yes,” said the girl, faintly. 

“And I won’t allow those black stains round your eyes. Elieu! 
child; it would frighten the very crows to look at you. We have 
all a piece of work before us, and if you refuse your share, who’s go- 
ing to step into your shoes? Not another soul in the world could 
fill your place beside Bryan Kilmorey.” 

“No one shall get the chance,” said Marcella, firmly. 

“That’s the girl I believed you to be. And how is the poor little 
mother taking it? I will go and have a talk with her first, and then 
you and I will lay our heads together over this matter. It will be 
found that Bryan was not altogether unprepared for this crisis, and 
you will see that things will go well.” 

And then Marcella walked the paths outside while the priest went 
in and helped the mother to wrestle with her anguish, while the 
slow-coming night wore on ; and as the moonlight began to shine, 
the girl lived over again the scene of last night, now extracting the 
sweetness from the agony and hiving it in her heart of hearts, now 
losing all sense of it in her overwhelming tribulation. 

In spite of his brave assured words, .and of her own determina- 
tion to hope, she felt a lurking fear that he himself had believed a 
plausible case had been made up against him. 

And as the stars quickened and throbbed above her head, each 
like a fiery point of pain, she thought of how at this moment the 
news of the arrest of Bryan Kilmorey was flying from mouth to 
mouth in Dublin streets, and of how the newspaper venders were 
yelling the tidings through the thoroughfares, and up and down the 
lanes, and past the old house in Weaver’s Square where she had har- 
bored him on that most blessed yet most terrible night which had 
first brought her life into contact with his, and at the same time had 
projected this horrible shadow of misfortune upon his future. 


THE MISSING LINK. 


93 


CHAPTER XVIL 

THE MISSING LINK. 

Bryan Kilmorey was lodged in Kilmainham prison, and the 
world talked of his guilt, which was accepted as a foregone conclu- 
sion, and rejoiced over as the long-missing link, discovered at last, 
between the Nationalists, with whom this man had openly ranked 
himself in politics, and the Fenians, to whose councils he had all the 
while secretly belonged. 

His arrest caused a profound sensation in Dublin. In the best cir- 
cles scarce a voice was lifted in his favor. It was taken for granted 
that a man of good family and education, who had so far forgotten 
the traditions of his class and his duty to his queen as to become a 
Fenian, was quite capable of lying in wait for his fellow-man and 
fellow-landlord at a street corner, and doing him to death under 
cover of darkness. To suggest that a man ought to be held inno- 
cent till proved guilty was to be looked on as a secret advocate of 
murder, or, at least, as one in “ sympathy with crime.” 

For rumor already said that it would be proved in the forthcom- 
ing trial that Kilmorey had been a Fenian for years. According to 
a Central News telegram he was an agent for the American dyna- 
mite party, and in the caves and cellars of the isle of Inisheen, where 
he had of late surlily withdrawn himself from the society of his neigh- 
bors in the county, stores of arms and ammunition had been discov- 
ered, with material for the manufacture of explosives sufficient to 
reduce London to a heap of dust. 

Many people who had long looked upon him as an enthusiast, but 
knew him to be quite incapable of crime, were so bewildered at find- 
ing themselves objects of disgust and suspicion for holding favor- 
able opinions of him, that they withdrew from his defence, and 
went blindly with the stream. 

Some good, easy, honestly selfish folk, who had always tried to 
believe that God had created them solely to take care of themselves, 
and who had occasionally felt Kilmorey’s theories and practice with 
regard to the lower classes a thorn of reproach in their sleek sides, 
looked on this misfortune that had befallen him as a judgment upon 
his folly in meddling with misery that need not have concerned him, 
and silently wished him well out of the scrape, while they reflected 
•comfortably that the necks of wiser men like themselves could never 
be placed in such imminent danger. 

It was said that startling revelations, surpassing the inventions of 
romance, might be expected on the trial, but the detectives kept 


94 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


their secrets, and society languished on the rack of suspense. The 
whispers averred that a woman had been mixed up in the plot; some 
said a girl of low degree, others said a lady; while one version of 
the tale set forth how a beautiful needle-woman and a wealthy lady 
of title, both sworn Fenians, and both interested in Kilmorey, had 
been aiders and abettors of the murder, and were now in danger of 
being hanged. 

Not a few good women thought of his mother, and, hugging their 
own boy-babies, pitied her for ^ringing such a monster into the 
world; while others, of a harde&mature, were sure the mother of 
such a wretch must be worse than himself. Those who had known 
Mrs. Kilmorey in younger days were fain to remember, even when 
they spoke gently*of her, how warm she had always been on the 
National side of politics, and held her in some degree accountable 
for the evil-doing of her son. 

The fact that there was a mother in the question was mentioned 
in all the papers, and the “Press Association” discovered that the 
said mother was six feet high, with a masculine voice, and had been 
implicated, while Bryan was still a child, in International outrages 
abroad, when she had escaped from pursuit disguised as a man. 

As yet Marcella’s connection with the case had not been unearthed, 
or, at least, if anything of it was known, the public had not been 
taken into the confidence of those whose business it is to make such 
discoveries. Every morning she scanned the papers with burning 
eyes, dreading to see mention of her own name, or of the house in 
Weaver’s Square, but nothing of the kind appeared, and she allowed 
herself to hope that no clew existed to that occurrence of the event- 
ful night in January in which she had played so active a part. 

The allusions to a woman, to a needle-woman, or lady of title, or 
both, as having been mixed up in the transaction of the plot to mur- 
der, startled her, but as the rumor was vague in the extreme, and 
seemed to die away instead of gaining more definite form, she hoped 
that the only foundation for it lay in the bare fact that the police 
had searched the house in Weaver’s Square. Her father’s death, 
accounting for her own disappearance from the scene, and her sub- 
sequent sudden and complete change of estate, had, she believed, cut 
off all probability of further inquiry into the particulars of that mid- 
pight search. 

Still, every hour of the day and night she was conscious of the 
reality of that scene in the old house. Even in her troubled sleep 
she could not lose sight of the dimly visible closet door, could not 
forget her anxious vigil while listening for the great bell of “Pat- 
rick’s ” tolling the hour which was to enable he'r to set her prisoner 
free in safety. It was all so present to her mind that she fancied 
people would read the story in her eyes or hear the terror of it in 
her voice, and in those first days of Bryan’s inprisonment she was 
divided between her desire to be in Dublin, close to Kilmainliam, 
and her dread that the reappearance of her face in the streets of the 
city might in some way bring to mind and to light the daring and 
secret action of the Liberties’ girl who had hidden the present prjs.- 


THE MISSING LINK. 


95 


oner from the officers of justice, in the hour of and not far from 
the scene of the murder for which he was now to be tried. 

For the first week or so Mrs. Kilmorey’s illness was a positive 
reason for remaining quietly at Inisheen, but as soon as the poor 
little mother had recovered from the effects of the first shock she 
began to make piteous entreaties to be taken to Dublin, where she 
might be within easy reach of her son. 

Then she consulted with Father Daly as to what was the best 
thing to be done. Neither to him nor to the mother, more than to 
any other living soul, had Marfcqlla whispered the reason why she« 
dreaded to be seen in Dublin. They had as little cause to think 
that she had ever beheld Bryan Kilmorey in her life before she had 
met him under Mrs. O’Kelly’s chaperonage at the Patrick’s ball as 
had the world at large, and it seemed to her almost as desirable to 
keep all information to the contrary from their knowledge now as 
to hide it from the chief of the police. And so it happened that 
both Mrs. Kilmorey and Father Daly looked on in wonder and doubt 
at her evident distress and hesitation when the proposal to remove 
to Dublin, in company with and in charge of Bryan’s mother was 
confidently laid before her. 

A look of misery came into her face which startled both these 
true hearts when she said, 

“ Would it not do for the mother to come with me to Crane’s Cas- 
tle and remain quietly there till the trial is over? Father Daly could 
bring our messages to and fro — and there is the post. Perhaps we 
should only do mischief by our presence.” 

Mrs. Kilmorey turned her face to the wall with a moan and said 
no more. It was clear to her that too much had been expected of 
this girl in the fulness and promise of her youth and her heiress- 
ship, with the world before her and the brightest possibilities at her 
feet. She had thrown herself into an engagement with Bryan, not 
dreaming of the tragedy in which it was to involve her. Though 
she suffered for him, and refused to believe in his guilt, might she 
not naturally recoil in dismay at the prospect of the heavy and per- 
haps enduring cloud which would overshadow a future connection 
with him ? Slight she not feel that she ought to be released from 
her promise and be allowed to go away to happier scenes while the 
painful drama was being enacted in which she shrunk from playing 
her part? 

The conviction that such was the state of Marcella’s mind in the 
reaction which might be supposed to have followed her first burst 
of faith in and sympathy with him heaped fresh fuel on the fire of 
the widow’s tribulation, but she resolved to do her duty, and begged 
Father Daly to speak to the girl on the subject of a release from her 
engagement. • 

Father Daly tried to enter into Mrs. Kilmorey’s views, and ad- 
mitted that she might be right, It was true that Marcella was 
changed, and that she showed an unmistakable cowardice about 
going to Dublin, which must be attributed to her horror of appear- 
ing before the eyes of the world as the affianced wife of a man in 


96 


MARCELLA. GRACE. 


prison under charge of murder. No doubt the mind of an impres- 
sionable girl might almost give way under the pressure of such cir- 
cumstances. A pleasant life awaited her could she but sever her- 
self from the painful associations which at present surrounded her. 
Already there were many callers at Crane’s Castle to express sym- 
pathy with her as one who had been innocently betrayed into friend- 
ship with people so dreadful as the prisoner of Kilmainham and bis 
mother. Each visit and letter of Miss O’Donovan put some fresh 
proof before Marcella of how eagerly a safe and pleasant world was 
endeavoring to save her from the consequences of her own rashness. 
Why should the girl be supposed to be a heroine merely because 
she had shown generous impulses, and had not been able to help 
loving Bryan Kilmorey, whom every one loved? 

To approve of a man while he was safe and well and in an honor- 
able position was one thing. To cleave to him when he stood aloof 
from society, execrated by the crowd, and suspected by even the 
most charitable— when standing by him meant pain and sorrow and 
humiliation — Father Daly saw that that was quite another matter. 
And so he consented to speak to Marcella. 

She was walking up and down the path above the rocks as she 
was accustomed to do while the priest took her place beside Mrs. 
Kilmorey. The day was a glorious one in the end of July, but the 
sumptuous coloring of mountain, moor, and water had no longer 
meaning or beauty for Marcella, whose eyes saw only, wherever 
they turned, the prison walls and barred gates of Kilmainham. 

Father Daly joined her and walked up and down with her for a 
few minutes trying to keep pace with her restless steps, till at last 
he said, 

“My dear, the mother and I have been talking about you, and I 
want to tell you the conclusion we have come to, if you will give 
me your attention. We think you ought not to be asked to go to 
Dublin at present, ought not to get yourself mixed up with this 
trial.” 

“I will not be mixed up in it,” said Marcella, a hectic spot grow- 
ing on her cheek as the familiar dread rose and stared her in the 
face, the fear of being confronted with those policemen to whom she 
had spoken on the night of the murder, and who, with the keen 
shrewdness which she imagined must belong to their class and office, 
would be sure to remember her. 

Father Daly was shocked into silence. Her cowardice disappoint- 
ed him. Yet he had made up his mind that she was to be excused 
and must do as she pleased, and he would be patient with her. 

“ I do not want to be mixed up in it,” she said, “because I believe 
no good could be done that way. What would be gained by the 
presence of his mother in Dublin ?*> She is not able to visit him, and 
she would be more lonely and afflicted there than here. My plan is 
that she should come with me to Crane’s Castle, where I will nurse 
her and take care of her till all this trouble passes over.” 

Then Father Daly thought she spoke lightly, and he felt less com- 
punction for her, and spoke a little more of his mind. 


THE MISSING LINK. 


97 


“I think she will go to Dublin, but do not trouble yourself about 
that. I will make arrangements for her there. You see, love natu- 
rally looks on things with peculiar eyes, and to be near Kilmainham 
will be to her a sort of satisfaction. And, my dear, after a few more 
days there will be nothing to hinder your return to Crane’s Castle 
and to comfortable friends.” 

A little wild sob of a laugh broke from Marcella which had al- 
most been a cry of anguish. It was natural she should be misun- 
derstood, yet how was she to account for herself? Better be thought 
heartless and fickle than that she should thrust herself into the dan- 
ger of being called on to bear witness against Bryan Kilmorey, to 
give evidence in the case for his prosecution which he himself had 
admitted might prove almost overwhelming. By hiding among the 
bogs and mountains she could shield him as she had shielded him 
before ; by weakly yielding to the temptation to see him and be near 
him, and also to clear herself of hateful suspicion in the eyes of those 
who also loved him in their own way, she might prove to be his un- 
doing. 

He himself could not suspect her. He would know or guess the 
motive of her conduct. In his letters he did not hint at the danger 
that was in her mind, and she never dared to put any allusion to it 
on paper, lest her letter might be read by other eyes than his own. 

Yes, let Father Daly see her conduct by the light in which he had 
just shown it to her. Let Mrs. Kilmorey abhor her as a slight thing 
whose enthusiasm for a noble man had been blown away by the first 
breath of the storm. Better even that Bryan himself should believe 
her to be untrue than that her voice should be lifted to condemn 
him. 

She would lie by here, ignored and forgotten, till, the trial over, 
the informers confounded, and the absence of all corroborative evi- 
dence having saved the accused from the consequences of their 
machinations, he should be set free, acquitted before the world. Bet- 
ter, if he were then to turn away from her as a creature who had 
failed him in the hour of his need, as seeming gold that had been 
tried in the fire and proved to be dross, than that, using her as a 
tortured instrument, his enemies should prevail. 

This thought pressing on her with increasing force hardened her 
resolution, and enabled her to say to Father Daly, while that strange 
little laugh of hers was still paining his ears, 

“Of course I know I am my own mistress, and at Crane’s Castle I 
will stay till this is over. If Mrs. Kilmorey will not stay with me, 
then I fear she must go alone, as you suggest.” 

After this, preparations were made for Marcella’s return to Crane’s 
Castle and Mrs. Kilmorey’s departure for Dublin. How the poor 
little mother who found it difficult to move from one room to an- 
other in her home should manage to accomplish the journey was a 
problem to every one except herself, but she never doubted that the 
strength of her love would cut the way for her through an army of 
seeming impossibilities. Meanwhile she and Marcella spoke less and 
less together of the subject at both their hearts. Mrs. Kilmorey had 

7 


98 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


accepted it as a settled thing that the girl, eager to save herself from 
being mixed up in a scandal, had retreated from her position as Bry- 
an’s affianced wife, and would take the opportunity of his mother’s 
departure for the city to withdraw all but a friend’s interests (and 
perhaps even that too) from those with whom she had so unfortu- 
nately connected herself, not dreaming at the time of discredit and 
disgrace. 

And still the proofs multiplied that others were able and willing 
to help Marcella out of her unhappy dilemma. More cards, invita- 
tions, and such tokens of good-will were brought by Miss O’Donovan 
to Inisheen, having been left at Crane’s Castle for Miss O’Kelly by 
the surrounding gentry, good people who drove great distances to 
show their willingness to reclaim the heiress of Distresna, who was 
so young and who had received a foreign education, and who ought 
for all sorts of reasons to be forgiven for having dropped into sad 
mistakes at the very outset of her career. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE INQUISITOR. 

It was the tourist season, the time of year when the few strangers 
who ever find their way into the highlands of Connemara may be 
seen climbing on long cars, or standing about looking dissatisfied and 
supercilious on the door-steps of country inns and half-way houses, 
or can be heard “drawing out” innocent-looking car-drivers whose 
sly answers they accept in the most literal manner, and whom they 
therefore do not find so witty as they had been led to expect. 

A gentlemanly-looking man, who appeared to be a tourist, for he 
was certainly a stranger, and seemed to have no business in travelling 
but to gaze about at the scenery and question the driver about the 
state of the country, took one morning the seat next the horses on 
the long car from Galway, and made himself as comfortable as the 
circumstances would permit. There were two points of evidence in 
favor of his being a native of our island, even if a tourist: one was 
his rich, rolling, though by no means vulgar brogue, the other was 
the fact that he grumbled at nothing that happened. The splendid 
weather and the glowing scenery evidently rejoiced him, and as he 
presented a cigar to the gladdened driver, it was with an eye-twinkle 
of sympathy which had never been learned on the thither side of the 
Channel. 

This eye-twinkle was only one small outward sign of a curious 
power of sympathy possessed by the man, somewhat like the power 
by which the snake-charmer is supposed to charm the snake. We 
hear in these days a great deal of the strange exercise of volition by 
which one person draws another to move from place to place, but 
this traveller’s specialty was to induce people to speak their minds 
to him truly, whether it were for their interest to do so or no. Just 


THE INQUISITOR. 


99 


as the serpent comes forth out of its hiding-place at the sound of the 
charmer’s piping, so would the fondly hidden thought issue from the 
lips of the reticent at the will of this apparently uninquisitive and 
easy-mannered gentleman, and many who had thoroughly enjoyed 
his company would, having left it, feel a sudden reaction leading 
them to search their memories for their secrets, much as they might 
on other occasions feel in their pockets for the safety of purse and 
watch. 

This being so, Mr. O’Malley, who lived by judicious exercise of 
his singular power, and enjoyed the practice of it even in unofficial 
moments, passed his time very pleasantly during the long day’s jour- 
ney into the mountains, and filched more or less information which 
would be useful to him hereafter from his unconscious fellow-pas- 
sengers, who had no idea that their brains were being picked. 

At present he was abroad on decidedly official business, but, as a 
painter on his way to paint the portrait of a great man which he ex- 
pects to bring him fame may beguile his journey by making sketches 
which will work up into future pictures, so did the great agent of 
the police make studies peculiar to his own art as he hastened tow- 
ards the most promising and interesting piece of work which his ex- 
perienced hands had touched for many a day. 

He was going to lay hold of an important piece of evidence in a 
pending criminal prosecution which it was highly desirable should 
end in conviction and punishment of the accused. There had been 
some trouble in tracing up this witness, but all that was over, and 
now there only remained to claim her assistance for the prosecution. 
For it was a woman who held this power in her hands, and a pretty 
woman too, as Mr. O’Malley had been credibly informed. 

He put up for the night at a small inn among the mountains, 
much to the surprise of the driver, who, disappointed at losing him 
for the rest of the journey, tried to convince him that no sport of 
any kind was to be found on the spot where he proposed to remain. 
However, there Mr. O’Malley stayed till morning, when he hired a 
small car and started early, accompanied by a quiet-looking man 
who had the day before occupied a seat on the opposite side of the 
public conveyance and had also passed the night at the inn. Early 
in the golden afternoon they left their car at a way-side cottage which 
signalled “lodging and entertainment for man and beast,” and walked 
a mile till they reached the shore of the lake which encircled Ini- 
sheen. 

Marcella was sitting reading to Mrs. Kilmorey on a low seat by 
her couch. Neither woman gave her mind to the sense of what was 
read, but the mere exercise of pretending to hear and understand, of 
making believe to turn the thoughts from one ever-present subject, 
was a sort of necessity for both in the long monotony of their day 
in this solitude. 

The mother’s brain was busy counting the hours and moments 
that must still elapse before she should find herself on the road to 
Dublin. The journey was to begin to-morrow, but to-morrow seemed 
far away to her impatient expectation. In the mean time, Marcel- 


100 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


la’s voice rather irritated than soothed her. She began to feel that 
it would be a relief to her to get away from this girl w r ho so visibly 
suffered through Bryan’s misfortune, yet had not the courage to take 
up her cross and be a martyr for his sake. 

Marcella while she read, simply felt that this reading afforded her 
a sort of grasp by which she held herself balanced over a precipice 
which might any moment ingulf her. The continual utterance of 
words, words, words, which bore no meaning to her mind, were so 
many jerks which broke the thread of consecutive thought, and kept 
it from winding round her throat and strangling her. She also was 
aware that it would be a relief to be separated from the unhappy 
mother who must be allowed to misunderstand her so terribly, who 
was going on her lonely way to - morrow, that to - morrow which 
would thus sever the link which bound her, Marcella, in with the 
daily chain of a slowly unfolding tragedy. How she was to live 
after that link had been snapped, and she found herself alone with 
her grief and horror in the desert region of Crane’s Castle, she could 
not dare to ask herself. And so the reading went on, more words 
without meaning, more sound without sense, anything to make a 
monotonous noise that should interrupt thought and forbid conver- 
sation, till the little parlor-maid opened the drawing-room door, and 
said that a gentleman wanted to see Miss O’Kelly. 

Nothing more unexpected could well have happened to interrupt 
the perfunctory reading, for the virtuous county people, with all 
their charity towards Marcella, had known where to draw the line 
in making their demonstrations, and every one, even the impatient 
Mr. O’Flaherty, had forborne to make a call at Inisheen. 

Therefore, if the venerable golden eagle who was supposed to 
haunt the topmost crags of Ben-dhu overhanging the lake had been 
found tapping for admittance at the cottage-windows, the circum- 
stance would not have been more surprising than was this announce- 
ment of a gentleman’s visit. 

He was shown in, and though seen to be a complete stranger, was 
invited to take a chair opposite the ladies, for he looked like a man 
who had come there for a purpose. Mrs. Kilmorey thought he 
might be her son’s solicitor arrived with some comforting intelli- 
gence. Marcella had time to think of nothing before meeting the 
strange man’s eyes fixed upon hers, full of that latent power of see- 
ing through thick veils, and luring forth the truth from its seeming- 
ly secure hiding-place; and having met and instinctively recognized 
the look, she knew who he was and what errand had brought him 
there. The day she had prayed might never rise had dawned and 
had already passed its noon. The hour she had dreaded and hidden 
from was at hand. It was not at Miss O’ Kelly, the heiress, that 
this person was looking with that strange, conciliating, yet pitiless 
glance which made her suddenly feel as if stealthy fingers were upon 
her throat, but at Marcella Grace, the audacious girl whose daring 
hands and deceiving tongue had interfered with the law, and upon 
whom the law would now be revenged. 

For one moment she quailed and sickened, and from the depths 


THE INQUISITOR. 


101 


of her soul cried to the earth to swallow her; the next her resolu- 
tion had come to her aid and stood as a bar between her and the 
enemy. 

“Mrs. Kilmorey,” began the visitor, addressing the small frail 
woman wiio sat up on her couch with a glimmer of hope in the pale- 
blue eyes that strained towards him, “I am sorry to have to come 
here on a painful errand, and I will try to hurt you as little as possi- 
ble. My business is with this young lady, and if I may see her alone 
it will save you some uneasiness, perhaps.” 

“ If it is anything connected with my son’s affairs, I want to know 
it at once,” faltered the mother, shuddering under the ominous warn- 
ing of his words. ‘ ‘ I am the nearest to him — no one is so near as a 
mother. Nothing must be hid from me.” 

Mr. O’Malley sighed. This white, trembling ghost of a mother 
was harder to deal with than the masculine personage for whom ru- 
mor had prepared him. But his time was precious, and the indul- 
gence of sentiment was no way included in the role of his duty. 

He merely remarked, as he took a note-book from his pocket, “I 
should have preferred to have seen this lady alone. But it must be 
as you will.” 

Marcella, having rapidly reviewed the position in her mind, also 
felt that a struggle would be useless, and sat perfectly still, holding 
the closed book upright on her knees with both hands, as if it were 
the outward form of that barricade which she had erected and 
meant to stand between her and the powers that were set to destroy 
Bryan. 

“ Now, I must beg of you not to be frightened or annoyed at any- 
thing I am going to say to you, Miss O’Kelly,” pursued the visitor, 
as, having glanced over a page of his note-book, he closed it, keep- 
ing his finger on the page, and looked mildly but firmly at Marcella. 
“If I ask you questions, pray believe that personal inquisitiveness 
has nothing to do with them. You and I have both a duty to dis- 
charge, and I rely on you to co-operate with me in a matter of very 
serious and solemn moment, by telling me all that you remember 
hearing on the circumstances which I shall suggest to you.” 

Marcella bowed her head, and for one moment drooped her eyes, 
only to fix them again on his. Her face had grown sharp and white 
during the last few minutes, and only the eyes, dark, wide-awake, 
and full of intelligence, seemed to live in it. Lips, brow, and chin 
were set as if in a swoon. 

‘ ‘ I have addressed you by your present name as Miss O’Kelly, but 
I will now speak to you as Miss Marcella Grace. It was as Marcel- 
la Grace that you were concerned in the matter of which I am now 
about to question you. ” 

“There you make a mistake,” said Mrs. Kilmorey, with an accent 
of faint triumph. “ She is the daughter of a cousin of the late Mrs. 
O’Kelly of Distresna and Merrion Square, Dublin. Her name never 
was Grace.” 

Marcella made no remark, and Mrs. Kilmorey sunk back on her 
cushions exhausted. 


102 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


Mr. O’Malley glanced at her with sympathy, and then pursued hi* 
examination of Marcella. 

“You lived during last January in the large gable house at the 
corner of Weaver’s Square in the Liberties of Dublin? You lived 
there with your father, who was a weaver of poplin?” 

Marcella’s lips moved in assent. 

“You remember the night of the 10th of January?” 

“Yes, I remember it well. The police roused my father and me 
from our rest, and demanded to search the house. My father was 
angry, but had to submit because of the Coercion Act. The police 
searched and went away, having found nothing they were looking 
for.” 

There was a burning light in her eyes now, and the color had 
come into her lips again. Her glance never flinched as she made 
her statement. 

“Is that all you remember of the night of the 10th of January 
last? Try and think about it a little. Did you not admit any one 
that night at an unusual hour?” 

“No.” 

“Indeed! You are sure of that? No one knocked at the door as 
you were sitting up late at your work and asked for shelter?” 

“ No one.” 

Mr. O’Malley looked at her silently for a few moments, then said, 
“Ah!” and again reflected a little as he knit his brows over his note- 
book. 

“ There is a secret closet in that house in which you were then 
residing, Miss O’Kelly,” he continued, presently, as if he had been 
quite satisfied on the other point and had let it go. 

“Yes.” 

“You did not show it to the police that night when they were 
making their search, nor tell them of its existence ?” 

“No.” 

“You were quite sure no one was hiding in it on that occa- 
sion?” 

“Yes.” 

Mr. O’Malley made an entry in his book, and again resumed his 
questions, as if quite content with the answers he had already re- 
ceived. 

“Now tell me, when did you first learn that a murder had been 
committed on that night of the 10th, not far from the street in which 
you lived?” 

“ My father told me the next morning. We knew nothing of it 
till he brought the paper in.” 

The terrible questioner closed his book and leaned back slightly 
in his chair, while he fixed his quiet, observant gaze on those tort- 
ured, burning eyes of hers, and lowered his voice, with a swift 
glance at the motionless form of the mother, who lay, whether lis- 
tening or not it were hard to tell, and made no sign as the inquisi- 
tion went on. 

“Now, Miss Grace, I want you to tell me what was the special 


THE INQUISITOR. 


103 


occasion on which you first made the acquaintance of Mr. Bryan 
Kilmorey.” 

“I met him at the St. Patrick’s hall at Dublin Castle, where my 
relative, Mrs. O’Kelly, introduced me to him.” 

“ And never before that night?” 

“ Never.” 

Mr. O’Malley made no remark, but sat looking at her with that 
gentle, penetrating gaze under which her heart froze and burned 
with the pain of her falsehood. And while he observed her he was 
thinking, 

“ She lies bravely, but the lie will destroy her. When a truthful 
spirit consents to falsehood, there is war between body and soul. 
Even if we had no case to be completed by her evidence she must 
be got to speak the truth, to save.her own life or reason. ” 

He drew the strap across his note-book, and took up his gloves as 
if all were over and he was going; but as he stood up, hat in hand, 
lie suddenly said, 

“ And you are prepared to swear that on the night and in the hour 
of Mr, Ffont’s murder you did not admit Bryan Kilmorey secretly 
into your house, did not listen to his prayer for shelter, did not hide 
him in that secret closet, nor liberate him from it the next morning 
early, long after the fruitless visit of the police, who were searching 
for him? You are prepared to swear all this if need be?” 

“ I am.” 

“That is all, then. I will not trouble you with any more ques- 
tions for to day. But I must tell you, Miss Grace, that, unpleasant 
as I fear it will be to you, you will be summoned, and will be bound 
to appear on the trial of Bryan Kilmorey, and you are expected to 
give evidence in accordance with the circumstances I have stated to 
you, and which are believed to be facts. ” 

Marcella had also stood up, and had never removed her uphappy 
eyes from his face. When he quitted the room, which he did with 
a certain polite abruptness, she followed him to the hall door, where 
he turned and looked at her inquiringly, encouraging her to speak 
whatever thought was struggling within her for utterance. 

She advanced a step to him, her hands outstretched : the spell of 
this man’s strange power was upon her, urging her to tell him ev- 
erything, to claim his help, his counsel. He looked strong, kind, 
sympathizing; he would rid her of this torturing lie that was already 
eating her heart, he would guard her confidence, and advise her as 
to what course of conduct might be best for her in Bryan’s interests. 

Seeing her thoughts in her face, O’Malley stepped back across the 
threshold, removing his hat again, and taking her kindly by the 
hand. 

“You have something more to tell me,” he said; “ speak, do not 
be afraid. You are not one to live through the part you have un- 
dertaken. Have mercy on yourself.” 

But at the same moment Maicella regained her presence of mind, 
and by force of will broke the spell to which she had nearly yielded. 

“I have lived through trouble already,” she said. “I can live 


104 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


through more. I have spoken, and I have nothing to add. But 
will you not come in and take some refreshment? If Mr. Kilmorey 
were — at home,” she said, forcing a bright smile — “if he were in 
his rightful place, he would not let you go in this inhospitable fash- 
ion. Neither would his mother, but she is ill — ” 

“ Thank you, I have ordered lunch not far away, and I will tor- 
ment you no more to-day,” he answered, pitiful of her scorched eyes, 
that seemed, in spite of her words and bearing, to moan to him to 
go. And so he left her, and went rapidly towards the boat, where 
his henchman was awaiting him. 

Then Marcella went back to the drawing-room, still strong in her 
knowledge that she had baffled Bryan’s enemies, that she had denied 
them the morsel of evidence they were hungering for, that she had 
broken the chains they were forging, and overthrown their plots, 
and that, though she died of the pain of her sin, she would set him 
free. 

Mrs. Kilmorey was sitting upright on her couch, watching for the 
girl’s return, and immediately began to talk to her. 

“ What did that dreadful man mean by asking you such extraor- 
dinary questions, Marcella? And tell me what you answered him. 
My mind is so confused. It seemed to me he mistook you for some- 
body else. And yet you allowed him to suppose you were some- 
body else. I think I was in a kind of swoon part of the time, so 
that I did not follow all that was said. ” 

‘ ‘ He did not mistake me for any one else, mother. He has found 
out who I am, who I was — that is all. I had hoped they would not 
find me out But it has not done them any good — their tracking me.” 

“ I do not understand you in the least. He called you Marcella 
Grace. Was that ever your name?” 

“ It is my real name. I might have told you so any day, only it 
seemed so unnecessary; and there were one or two good reasons for 
not bringing it forward.” 

“And your father? Did that man not say that your father was 
a weaver of poplin?” 

“ He said so; and it was true. My father and I were very, very 
poor until Mrs. O’Kelly found us. It was by my mother, my poor 
young mother, who had made a strange kind of marriage through 
reverse of fortune, that Mrs. O’Kelly was related to me. She did 
not wish it known that we were exactly what she found us.” 

“Nothing surprises me now,” said Mrs. Kilmorey, pathetically. 
“And it does not matter, except that you might have confided in 
me. But what,” she went on, putting her hand to her head — “ what 
did he mean by asking you about the police searching your house 
on the night of the murder, and about where you hid Bryan? You 
said you never saw him till the night of the St. Patrick’s ball, and 
you held to that. It was true, Marcella, was it not? Look me in 
the face and say it was true.” 

There was an agony in her eyes that Marcella could not lie to. 
She dropped on her knees, and pressed the mother’s cold hand to 
her own burning eyes. 


THE INQUISITOR. 


105 


“ It was not true. I had seen Bryan before. I have denied it to 
them, but I cannot go on deceiving you. I have sent him away baf- 
fled, that man; but I know he has not done with me. He will come 
back; they will set on me, now they have got the clew, and I shall 
be worried and torn like a hunted animal. But they shall not get 
the truth from me — the wicked, false truth that would pretend to 
make Bryan guilty. So never fear, mother, 1 will not tell! only I 
must speak truth to you when you look at me like that.” 

“ Where had you seen him?” 

“You heard it said. That dreadful man with his kind eyes and 
his gentle voice, he told it all in your presence, but maybe you did 
not hear him. How they got the information I cannot guess, for 
even my father did not know what happened.” 

“ What happened?” 

“I was sewing late at night, that hateful night. I was a poor, 
a very poor girl, sewing to earn a sixpence. My father had gone to 
bed. He was weak and old and failing from his w T ork, and I was 
almost in despair because I could earn so little. I heard a knock 
at the door and a man asked to come in, and it was Bryan. I had 
never seen him before, but in a moment I saw what he was. I let 
him in because of the tone of his voice, and 1 hid him because of the 
look in his face. And after he was hid safely, the police came and 
searched, and did not find him, and went away. And my father 
was angry at the disturbance, because he knew nothing about a man 
being hidden in the house. Very early in the morning I let Bryan 
out of the closet, that closet you heard mentioned, and he went 
away. And afterwards I met him at the St. Patrick’s ball, but he 
did not know me though I knew him. And he never knew me all 
the long time I have been here, until they came to take him from 
us; and he told me that a girl who had hidden him that night in 
Weaver’s Square might give the most telling evidence that could be 
produced against him. Then 1 told him who I was, that his mind 
might be at rest. ” 

An ashen look had been creeping over Mrs. Kilmorey’s face while 
she listened. The strange information just given only meant one 
thing for her. Marcella’s confession as to her own antecedents scarce- 
ly touched her. If the girl had told her she had been, before com- 
ing to Inisheen, a beggar, craving alms in the street, or a royal prin- 
cess standing beside a throne, she would have felt no surprise. One 
only and terrible thought had taken possession of her as she listened ; 
what brought Bryan into hiding on such a night and at such an hour? 

“You took him in,” she muttered ; “you hid him. Bryan Kil- 
morey hiding because a murder had been done ! Did he tell you 
why he hid, what had brought him there ? My God, girl, speak 1 
Tell me the rest, or you will kill me.” 

“ I do not know the rest,” said Marcella, with dry lips. “ I never 
asked him. I would not ask him, unless he chose to tell me — not 
in a hundred years ; whatever brought him there, it was nothing 
wrong. That much he said, though it was not necessary to me to 
hear it. ” 


106 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


Mrs. Kilmorey stared at her dumbly, with a look that asked a terri- 
ble question, a question that Marcella would not see. 

“I must know why Bryan hid that night. I am his mother, and 
I must know. I cannot live on quietly like anybody else— like you 
— without having so terrible a mystery cleared up. The Fenians did 
the murder, no doubt, and Bryan was a Fenian. I brought him up 
to it. I filled him with romantic love for his country, and I did not 
know what 1 had done till I found he had rushed, child as he was, 
headlong into the arms of a secret society. He thought to shake 
himself free of them, but they have had him in their clutches. How 
do I know what they have not compelled him to do?” 

Her voice sunk into a terrified whisper, while the look of horror 
deepened and widened in her eyes. 

“ I do not know what you mean,” said Marcella, coldly. 

The mother hid her face and moaned. 

“You must know what I mean. You shall know what I mean. 
I cannot bear such a burden alone. I shall go mad in an hour if 
you do not help me under this fear — ” 

“You mean that you doubt he may be guilty.” 

“ Oh, God! oh, God! that I should endure to hear you say it!” 

“You, his mother! Yes, indeed, you ought to be ashamed,” said 
Marcella. “You who nursed Bryan Kilmorey on your knee and 
brought him up to be a man, and knew his thoughts, and his actions, 
and his aspirations, to turn and be a traitor to him because of a little 
base, lying, circumstantial evidence! Oh, I thought Bryan had a 
mother who loved and believed in him; and, poor fellow, he so be- 
lieved in you, and was so thankful to you for educating him as you 
did, was so proud of your devotion to Ireland and to your poor fel- 
low-creatures, so glad that you had taught- him early to think more 
of the sufferings of others than of his own ease; and you reward him 
for all this trust by harboring such a hideous doubt of him. You 
imagine that he, who had courage to go out a mere boy to learn to 
use his gun in honorable warfare for a glorious cause, could after- 
wards, in his mature manhood, be coward enough to strike another 
man to death in the dark!” 

“ Spare me,” wailed Mrs. Kilmorey, “ spare me.” 

“You have not spared yourself,” said Marcella, scornfully. “I 
am only a poor girl, and it is not a year yet since I first knew Bryan ; 
but such a detestable thought of him could never have entered my 
head; and you his mother — his mother. Just Heaven! what will 
the world say when she can doubt him?” 

“You do not know the horrors of the working of a secret society,” 
persisted the mother; but something of the maddened tension of her 
gaze had relaxed, as she followed with hungry eyes every movement 
of Marcella’s eyes and lips while she reproached her, as if life and 
health and hope were all being rained down on her with the scorn 
from the girl’s face and voice; “you do not know how pitiless or- 
ders are given, and how death follows at once if they are not carried 
out.” 

“ I have heard of it,” said Marcella, “ and Bryan is one who would 


THE INQUISITOR. 


107 


have unflinchingly accepted the doom of disobedience. He would 
have refused to kill, and would have died.” 

“ His oatli — ” murmured the mother. 

“ Had been retracted. He had separated himself from Fenianism 
long before — he is the victim of the vengence of a secret society for 
having deserted it. If he dies, he will die a martyr, even though his 
own mother — ” 

A cry came from Mrs. Kilmorey, and she broke into wild weeping. 
Marcella was on her knees by her side in an instant. 

“Oh, mother, mother! why will you torture your own heart and 
mine imagining impossibilities? He will be safe because he is inno- 
cent.” 

“My darling!” sobbed the mother, holding her to her heart, “you 
have conquered for me. You have driven the demon away from 
me. Never again shall such a maddening fear get possession of me; 
you are worthy to be his wife, Marcella, and I— I — have been wrong- 
ing you too.” 

“ I know you have,” said the girl, quietly, “but this dreadful thing 
that I have feared has come to make us understand each other bet- 
ter. Now that it has come, I have met the worst, and we will go to 
Dublin; I shall not be afraid of being seen in the streets now that 
they know me and have followed me here; I shall have to go to the 
front and defy them.” 

Then followed long explanations, in which Marcella made the 
mother understand the motives which had been at work in her; and 
after all had been said and realized, Mrs. Kilmorey remained aghast 
at the girl’s quiet resolution to deny the truth that would lie to con- 
demn Bryan. 

The idea remained fixed in her mind, “They shall not get it from 
me, that morsel of cruel evidence which they would distort to their 
own purposes; I, only, hold it in my hand. They may kill me, but 
they shall not have it.” 

The very next day a document arrived, in which she was formal- 
ly summoned to appear on the trial, which was to take place in De- 
cember, as a witness in support of the case of the Crown against 
Bryan Kilmorey, for the murder of Gerald Ffrench Ffont, on the 
night of the 10th of January. 

“They are determined to have me,” she said, “and they shall get 
me. I will be there, never fear, and if I live I will foil them. Good 
God ! to think of their setting on a man like Bryan to destroy him, 
and making use of me to carry out their purpose. Come, little moth- 
er, cheer up. Without me they are powerless to hurt him, or they 
would not make such a fuss about getting me, and I will foil them 
or I will die — I will die." 

She sat down and wrote her orders concerning her change of 
plans. The house in Merrion Square was to be opened up, and Miss 
O’Donovan was to accompany her to Dublin, or to remain at Crane’s 
Castle, whichever she pleased. Miss O’Donovan elected to go to 
Dublin. Where a great sensation was going on, there Miss O’Dono- 
van liked to be, and the coming trial, with all its peculiar circum- 


108 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


stances, promised to be a great sensation. Miss O’Donovan had great- 
ly improved in condition since last she had appeared in Dublin, in 
the character of an impoverished gentlewoman. Her wardrobe had 
been plentifully and elegantly replenished, and she had the use of 
more pocket-money than ever she had enjoyed in her life before. 
In and about Dublin she had hosts of friends, and she foresaw that 
a pleasant and exciting season was awaiting her; yet she was not at 
all unkind in her nature, and she liked both Bryan and Marcella. 

“Miss O’Donovan will come, mother, and she will stand between 
us and the world, I know ; that part of it will be congenial to her. 
She will see all dear Mrs. O’Kelly’s old friends, who will come to 
look me up and to pay me attention, and to find out what my con- 
nection really is with this trial. She will shake her head with them 
and say, ‘Yes, yes, you remember what this house was; it is sad to 
find it fallen into such hands; yet she is not a bad girl, only there is 
a taint in her blood, through her belonging, on one side, to the peo- 
ple; and the Kilmoreys are not quite bad either, only both mother 
and son are mad on one point. ’ ” 

So Marcella would talk, bustling about getting ready for the jour- 
ney for Dublin, making all Mrs. Kilmorey’s preparations for leaving 
Inisheen, while the poor little mother watched her with fascinated 
eyes and a frozen heart, hardly venturing to ask herself would this 
girl really dare to perjure herself to save Bryan? She must not be 
allowed to do it; she could not be suffered to do it; and yet who 
was to stop her if she determined to stand up in the witness-box 
and swear a lie? No eye saw that occurrence between them that 
night; it was all a secret, lying with her and him and God. If she 
wounded her own moral nature to set him. free, who could prevent 
her, what should spring up to contradict her? 

Then the same thought came to Mrs. Kilmorey that had crossed 
the mind of the terrible inquisitor of the police, that the girl would 
die of her sin. 

“And if she did so die, and go to God to be pardoned because of 
the source of her sin in love, and its expiation in agony,” asked the 
mother’s hungry heart that craved for her child, “ would not Bryan 
still be free — Bryan who was not guilty but innocent? would not 
the widow’s son come back to her cleared of impossible guilt before 
the world? And there were other women to love him, as fair and 
as sweet as Marcella, though maybe not so terribly strong in their 
love. That great strength in woman was not always desirable, not 
always lovable in the eyes of men.” 

And then the unhappy mother flung up her hands and fell on her 
face before Heaven, and craved mercy for having dreamed such 
wicked dreams, and cried aloud for courage to thrust the desire for 
evil out of her tortured soul. 


WHAT THE WORLD SAID. 


109 


CHAPTER XIX. 

WHAT THE WORLD SAID. 

Dublin in September is as deserted as other cities in that month, 
and there is no life in its fashionable squares and streets, except 
when a horse-show or a flower-show draws a fluttering crowd of 
pretty faces and gay dresses from far country-houses among fields 
and pastures, or from near and delightful sea-side resorts along the 
shores of Dublin Bay. 

When Miss O’Donovan had opened up Mrs. O’Kelly’s old house 
in Merrion Square and made it comfortable for the reception of the 
ladies who were to follow her, she found herself almost alone in the 
fine square which is one of the handsomest bits of Dublin, and had 
to travel out to Killiney and Bray, and farther still into Wicklow 
County, to discuss with her acquaintances Miss O’Kelly’s connection 
with Bryan Kilmorey and the approaching trial. 

Mr. O’Flaherty and his daughter had preceded her to Dublin, and 
were staying at Killiney at the charming summer residence of a 
friend, a wealthy widow lady who was also a bosom friend of Miss 
O'Donovan. Here the latter lady paid one of her first visits, and 
her appearance was hailed with pleasure by a group of idle people 
assembled on a green terrace overlooking that blue bay, which is 
said to be like the Bay of Naples, and which many people, bitten 
with Erinmania, declare to be even much lovelier from certain points 
of view. 

The steep green hill of Killiney, soaring to that furze-girdled and 
rock-crowned point which pierces the towering rings of silver cloud 
crowning it, is covered with a net-work of groves, gardens, and villas, 
each with its own vantage ground for the enjoyment of a view of 
unspeakable beauty; and under the hill, following the exquisite 
curves of Killiney shore, runs the living sea, palpitating beneath its 
veils of delicate color, blue as violets, and green as the drift weeds 
in a valley river, one hour tossing flame all along its shifting lines, 
the next overflowing its glittering boundaries with a motionless tide 
of molten silver and gold. 

Out of the green bowers around their terrace a little crowd of 
prosperous people gossiped and jested, looking over at the distant 
hill of Howth, wrapped in its mists of rich, languorous, melancholy 
blue. 

“I declare, here is Bride O’Donovan,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbon, the 
mistress of the house. “How very opportune! She will tell us 
some news, if any one can, on the subject.” 

“ I don’t think she knows any more than we do,” said Miss O’Fla- 
herty, who had been chief authority up to this moment. 


110 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“Oh, but she is straight from Connaught, and you have been a 
month in Scarborough, my dear Julia. Your father, I know, is ex- 
cellently well-informed, but then women always pick up scraps of 
gossip so much better than men; now don’t they, Mr. O’Flaherty?” 

Mr. O’Flaherty would have agreed that snow was falling from the 
daffodil-tinted sky before him if Mrs. Fitzgibbon had called upon 
him to do so. 

“My dear Bride! Got all that tiresome house-opening business 
over, and not too tired to talk to your friends? I hope not, for here 
we are pining for a little light on this Kilmorey business. It is a 
real godsend to meet a person who has come from the very source 
of all knowledge on the subject.” 

Miss O’Donovan took the seat eagerly presented to her by Mr. 
O’Flaherty, and folded her nicely gloved hands at her ample waist, 
and enjoyed a moment of triumph, while not unconscious of the 
difficulties of her position. 

She had several interests to reconcile while preserving her reputa- 
tion as a person who could tell a great deal if she would. She must 
please her friend Mrs. Fitzgibbon — whose countenance was very 
precious to her just now — and also beware of alarming Mr. O’Fla- 
herty, whose chosen ally she was, and whom she must not deprive 
at present of his hope that Miss O’Kelly of Crane’s Castle would 
ultimately listen to his suit, though hitherto she had apparently dis- 
couraged it. Were this hope suddenly extinguished, he might de- 
vote himself completely to Mrs. Fitzgibbon. And he was at present 
wearing the blue ribbon, was a man of good position in his coun- 
ty, and there was no knowing what might happen ; widows are so 
foolish. 

“In the first place, how much do you want to know?” said Miss 
O’Donovan. “You must remember my position is a delicate one. 
I cannot betray anything in the nature of a confidence.” 

“ Quite true — quite true. We only want to know what every one 
has a right to know,” said another lady, erecting her parasol against 
the sun with a very decided snap of its machinery. “There are 
certain things that ought to be open to the public in matters of this 
kind. I don’t hold with secret investigations. ” 

“Everything will come out on the trial, ’’said a sly young bar- 
rister, with the air of having thrown a good deal of light on the 
subject. 

“ Thank you, Mr. Shine. Belonging to the law naturally makes 
one very perspicuous,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbon. “But in the mean 
time, until the ‘ whole discovery is found out,’ as the newspaper-sell- 
ing imps cry, we want a little help at our guesswork. Who is the 
mysterious lady, for instance, who has been hinted at so often in the 
Central News telegrams?” 

“Is it true that Miss O’Kelly is or was engaged to Bryan Kilmo- 
rey?” asked a girl whose soft gray eyes were full of an interest in the 
matter that was not all vulgar curiosity. 

“If that were so, I should certainly have known,” said Miss 
O’Donovan, “How could I have helped knowing?” she added, ur- 


WHAT THE WOKLD SAID. 


Ill 


gently, delighted to be able to put down this suggestion without 
positive breach of truth. Certainly she never had been told of any 
such engagement. But she had guessed its existence for all that. 

“There!” said the lady with the parasol. “I knew a girl with 
Miss O’Kelly’s advantages would never destroy herself in such a 
manner.” 

“He is very handsome, ” said the gray-eyed girl in a low voice. 

‘ ‘ I saw him only once, but I thought he had such a noble counte- 
nance.” 

“Oh, I suppose all the young ladies will take his part, like Miss 
Eyre, because he is good-looking, but I think that sort of sentimen- 
tal sympathy with criminals is one of the most unwholesome signs of 
the age.” 

“ A man is not known to be a criminal until he has been tried and 
found guilty,” said Mr. Shine, with an approving glance at the girl 
with the gray eyes. 

“ Is he a friend of yours, Mr. Shine?” asked the owner of the par- 
asol. 

“He had once many friends,” put in Mrs. Fitzgibbon. “I fear 
it is a bad sign when a man drops away from the society to which 
he was born. When he capie home from travelling, some years ago, 
he was at a party at my house, and I thought him one of the finest 
young fellows I had ever seen. And his mother was so proud of 
him.” 

“Oh, you know the mother, the— the — Amazon?” lisped a small 
woman, who based her claim as a charmer of men on her infantile 
manners. “ You see, Mrs. Fitzgibbon, I think these tall, masculine 
women are always so cruel — ” 

“Amazon! She is as small as you!” exclaimed Mrs. Fitzgibbon, 

‘ « and much prettier and more feminine, ” she added, aside to her 
next neighbor, “ though she speaks and acts like an ordinary adult.” 

“ Really!” cried several voices. 

‘ ‘ At present she is more like the ghost of a sick child than any- 
thing else,” said Miss O’Donovan. “I believe she will weep herself 
to death before the trial comes on.” 

‘ ‘ Better she should, ” faltered an old gentleman. ‘ ‘ When the only 
son of a widow turns out a rascal, it is enough to make angels weep.” 

“But you have not told us anything about Miss O’Kelly,” said 
Miss Eyre. “How is she mixed up in the affair?” 

“ Really, I do not know that she is mixed up in it at all, except 
that circumstances threw her into the arms of the Kilmoreys, as it 
were, in the very beginning. Dear Mrs. O’Kelly’s death was so sud- 
den, and the girl, having been brought up abroad, was so utterly 
without friends in Ireland, had only paid one short visit to her aunt, 
and had gone back to finish her schooling, when she was called upon 
to step into Mrs. O’Kelly’s place. Father Daly, the priest down at 
Distresna, attended Mrs. O’Kelly on her death-bed and went straight 
to France when all was over and brought the girl home. It appears 
that though he was such a friend of dear Mrs. Kelly, who was al- 
ways so nice and conservative, he was also a friend of the Kilmoreys 


112 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


— the country priests all do sympathize with the Nationalists, you 
know — ” 

“ There was no taint of Nationalism in the Kilmoreys originally, ” 
said Mr. O’Flaherty; “I will say so much for them. All that came 
in with the mother, let her be an Amazon or a pygmy. She is de- 
scended from some of the Irish brigades, ‘Wild Geese, ’and all that 
sort of thing.” 

“It is surprising how that old continental service is still making 
foreigners of some of us, ’’said the nice old gentleman. 

“Great-grandfather’s old French sword hanging up in the hall, 
you know,” continued Mr. O’Flaherty. ‘ ‘ Even old Kilmorey would 
point to it with pride and say, ‘ My wife’s fortune, O’Flaherty. The 
only legacy ever bequeathed to her.’ And he had as little nonsense 
about him as any one of us. He was as sensible and sociable a 
neighbor as ever rode to hounds.” 

“Or mixed a glass of whiskey-punch, ” said Mr. Shine, without 
any alteration in the gravity of his demeanor, as he fixed his eyes 
innocently on Mr. O’Flaherty. 

“Or mixed a glass of whiskey-punch, as you say — ha! ha! A very 
good thing too, Mr. Shine, and a great deal better to be mixing it at 
home than strolling abroad preaching new doctrines to make the 
poor discontented with their lot, sir.” 

Mr. Shine smiled and felt that he was not hit. He loved neither 
whiskey-punch nor preaching to the poor, All his desires were cov- 
ered by the dome of the Four Courts, and to get leave to talk to a 
judge and jury all day long was his idea of bliss. He wisely held 
that, if courts of justice must exist, it is better to sit with the Bar for 
prosecution or defence than to stand in the dock, either as a conse- 
quence of drinking too much whiskey, or of teaching strange doc- 
trines to the poor. 

“ That shaft was thrown away, papa,” said Miss Julia, T< as we are 
all ladies and gentlemen here. Don’t make Mr. Jones think that he 
has got among dangerous people;” upon which Mr. Jones, a portly 
iron-master whom Miss Julia had met at Scarborough, and beguiled 
across the Channel, began to declare that he had never been more 
delighted with any people in his life than the Irish as he now found 
them, that he had no idea — that he couldn’t have conceived, etc. ; the 
rest being for Miss Julia’s ears alone. 

“ Then it is merely from a girlish feeling of gratitude to her first 
friends that Miss O’Kelly clings to the Kilmoreys,” said Mrs. Fitzgib- 
bon. “Very pretty of her, I must say, but very dreary. What must 
we do to save her from the unpleasant consequences of her rashness?” 

“Excellent lady!” exclaimed Mr. O’Flaherty. 

“How shall we approach this Donna Quixote?” asked Mrs. Fitz- 
gibbon of Miss O’Donovan. 

“ I can give no advice. Miss O’Kelly is so firm in her own views, 
I really think it would be impossible to withdraw her from her as- 
sumed guardianship of Mrs. Kilmorey at present,” said Miss O’Don- 
ovan. “However, you can come and try. She will be at Merrion 
Square to-morrow.” 


WHAT THE WORLD SAID. 


113 


“ And Mrs. Kilmorey — ” 

“Will also be there, to stay till the trial is over.” 

“The mother of the man in prison for murder. I am not sure 
that my enthusiasm for Miss O’Kelly will lead me so far as to con- 
nect myself with her,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbon, slowly. “One must 
think of what would be said.” 

Mr. O’Flaherty’s jaw fell. 

“I — I— I— think it would be kind,” he murmured. 

“Now, papa, you see I was right,” said Julia. “You wanted me 
to go, and I thought whatever might be done in the country we 
should have to be careful here. How would you like to see yourself 
spoken of in the papers as a sympathizer with crime?” 

“ It would be no use, at any rate, ’’said Miss Eyre to Mr. Shine, 
who had edged himself near her in the course of the conversation. ‘ ‘ I 
believe that girl will stick to her post. I met her several times, at 
last St. Patrick’s ball, and at Mrs. O’Kelly’s. There was something 
about her I can’t describe. Did you know her?” 

“Like you, I have just met her. I am not as romantic as you, but 
I thought she had character in her face.” 

“ It is a dreadful tragedy. Do you think he did it, Mr. Shine?” 

“I am junior counsel for the prosecution, Miss Eyre, so what can 
I think? I believe at all events that you have jumped to the right 
conclusion in deciding that Miss O’Kelly will stand by the Kilmoreys. 
She is too deeply concerned with them to dream of s-uch a thing as 
deserting them.” 

“You know more about it all than we do.” 

** A little.” 

So it was that nobody of importance called on Miss O’Kelly when 
she arrived for the first time in Dublin to inhabit her house in Mer- 
rion Square, and this state of things was not much of a surprise, but 
a great relief to Marcella, who had nerved herself to encounter ques- 
tions, condolences, and counsels from people who knew nothing 
about her affairs. She had brought Miss O’Donovan to Dublin to 
stand between her and much of this kind of thing; but in order to 
show she was not afraid of it, she had insisted upon taking up her 
abode in her own house, prominent as it was in situation, and had 
placed flowers on her window-sills, and hung fresh curtains in her 
windows, that the world might see no trace of the terror in her heart, 
might not suspect her of feeling the slightest fear of the result of the 
trial of Bryan Kilmorey. For this reason she had refrained from 
following her impulse to take quiet lodgings near the prison of Kil- 
mainham, out of sight and hearing of the world, thus putting the 
smallest possible space between the prisoner and those whose con- 
stant thoughts were with him. She would not hang back in the 
shade as if she were conscious that they had reason to be ashamed of 
him. Nevertheless, she was thankful that the world left her un- 
molested, and never troubled herself about the tales that were told 
and the speculations indulged in when Miss O’Donovan went to pay 
her daily visits to her fashionable friends out of town. 


114 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


The shock of the first unhappy visit to Bryan being over, Mar- 
cella looked round for some means of passing the dreadful hours 
from every morning till every night, and from the beginning of one 
•week till the beginning of another. In presence of his mother and 
a warder, she dared not speak to him fully of the terrible visitor at 
Inisheen. The matter was alluded to, and she simply stated that 
strange questions had been asked her, to which she had, of course, 
returned an absolute denial. Bryan had turned pale as she spoke, 
and made an exclamation. She had glanced at the warder and then 
at him imploringly; and Kilmorey said no more, and so the matter 
passed. That was on the occasion of their first visit, hers and his 
mother’s, to his prison-cell. What could be said with a warder stand- 
ing near, within ear-shot of every word that was spoken? The moth- 
er’s affliction called for all Marcella’s care and attention, and the 
visit was a short agony, the poor little mother being carried back to 
the carriage in a fainting condition. No one could see the prisoner 
again for a certain number of days, and meantime Marcella had an- 
other visit from Mr. O’Malley at her house, and again denied that 
she had ever hidden or harbored the prisoner, or seen him at all be- 
fore the night of the St. Patrick’s ball. While she was saying the 
false words she felt his eyes looking through her as they had done 
before, and knew that hers had acknowledged her guilt to him a 
hundred times in the course of the interview. But what did that 
signify so long as she would not speak? 

It was the morning after that first visit to Bryan that she had 
again seen and foiled O’Malley, and after he was gone she felt that 
she must secure some distraction for her thoughts, or lose her mind. 
Leaving Mrs. Kilmorey slumbering in a state of reaction from the 
tension of yesterday’s excitement, she took Bridget, the old house- 
keeper, whom she had brought to town to stand between her and the 
Dublin servants, as she had brought Miss O’Donovan to stand be- 
tween her and the Dublin gentry, and muffled in a close black bon- 
net, veil, and cloak, went to take a walk through the part of the city 
she knew so well, to have another look at the old street, the old 
house, the spot where she had first met Bryan, and where she was 
going to swear she had never met him. She need not be afraid now 
of any one who knew her meeting and recognizing her. She had 
been tracked and traced, and was soon to appear before the world as 
Marcella Grace, her father’s daughter, the girl who had sewed for 
her living in the Liberties. That story of her foreign rearing, so in- 
geniously set on foot by poor Mrs. O’Kelly, was soon to be blown to 
the winds. She would stand in the witness-box as a girl who had 
pretended to be what she was not, and deceived her little world, and 
perhaps might therefore be open to suspicion as a credible witness. 
Well, in that matter at least, she had not intended to deceive any one. 
Mrs. O’Kelly had set the story on foot, and she had not ventured to 
contradict it in any large way, that was all. She had not thought 
much about it; it would have pleased her better to have informed 
every one of the exact state of her circumstances. But now, as to 
being a credible witness; she shuddered and walked faster to drive 


WHAT THE WOULD SAID. 


115 


away the dreadful thought that pursued her wherever she turned — 
the thought that she was now a liar, and was going to be a perjurer. 
She felt a vague wonder as she walked, so fast that poor old Bridget 
could scarcely keep pace with her, as to what Father Daly would 
say to her, how she was going to live under his eye when he came to 
understand what she was doing. She knew she would not be able to 
deceive him, any more than she had been able to deceive the mother. 
Dearly as she loved Bryan, he could not have the mother’s instinct 
which tempted her to permit sin that justice might be had for her 
son. He would urge, preach, scold, put her under a ban, but she 
would be firm. They should not hang Bryan on words coming from 
her lips, not though — Oh, God! that she could stop this thinking — 
Ay, here they were coming into Patrick’s Close, and the old ground 
was near at hand. There was the tower of Patrick’s lifting its dark 
body at the foot of the descending street. Here was the low-lying 
Coombe (vale), which she had traversed many times dreaming of six- 
pences and shillings earned, and half-crowns hard to earn. Now she 
had money to throw to any poor girl who might be passing by with 
starved eyes that saw nothing but the struggle for existence; yet 
what was this horror of sin that had come into her life? Sin: was 
it sin? Sin to refuse to murder Bryan Kilmorey with her own hand 
that had once been so proud of having saved him? 

‘ ‘ That is the house I want to go into, Bridget. I once knew some 
poor people who lived in it. I wish to ask about them.” 

There stood the old house at the corner of Weaver’s Square, seem- 
ing more dingy, old, and battered even than it had looked six months 
ago. It appeared forlorn, deserted ; she could not tell whether it 
was inhabited or not. This woman with the shawl over her head 
coming down the street might be able to tell her. Oh yes, the wom- 
an could tell her anything she wanted to know about that very house. 

* ‘ The key is kep’ in the next neighbor’s, ma’am, an’ that’s meself , 
and ready enough ; but sure it’s not much of a place for the likes of 
you to go into. (Patsie ! bring out the big key !) Nobody lives in it 
since ould Grace the weaver died, and the lan’lord doesn’t find it so 
easy to set it in tinimints, miss, because of the holes in the stairs, and 
that. An’ he doesn’t want to spend money on it, because people do 
be sayin’ that it’s clane pulled down it’ll be next year by the sanitary 
gintlemen. Sure there’s great improvements entirely goin’ on; and 
look at Guinness’s buildin’s! They may say what they like, callin’ 
them that lives in them Guinness's flats, but meself thinks they’re 
sharp enough afther their own comfort that takes to them. Now, 
ma’am, here’s the key cornin’, and you can take a walk through the 
ould house; only mind the holes!” 

In at the old familiar door again, and up the well-known stairs. 
Here was where Bryan stood when he told her, with his straight 
stern glance, that he had done nothing wrong. There on the land- 
ing she had waited while the police searched the house. Here her 
poor father had stood while he unfolded the newspaper that told of 
a murder in the streets; and now for the crazy room where she had 
put Bryan into hiding. 


116 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“There’s nothing particular about the place, ma’am, ye see, except 
it be that ould closet. Sure ye’d niver see the door of it in the wood 
only I showed it to you. It’s a sort of a black hole. God knows 
what it was put there for ; but the police have got an eye on it this 
while back — somethin’ about a murder that was done in the street — 
and I’m tould that they suspect it’s in there the man was murdered; 
but whether he was shut up in it till he was starved, or whether he 
was knocked on the head, I couldn’t rightly tell you. I’m only a 
matter of a month in the street meself; but there’s Mrs. Casey, a 
neighbor of mine, says it couldn’t ’a’ been in ould Grace’s time, be- 
cause he was a dacent crature, and besides, she would ha’ knowed. 
Anyhow, there’ somethin’ goin’ on about it, an’ if Mrs. Casey ’d been 
here she’d ha’ tould you the whole thing; but I niver had a head 
meself for the rights of a story. If you’d like to wait a bit, ma’am, 
Mrs. Casey ’ll be in at three ; an’ if ye’d sit down in my own poor 
little place till she comes, I’ll dust the best chair for ye.” 

“ Oh no, thank you greatly,” said Marcella, who had no wish to 
be confronted with Mrs. Casey, the woman who had come for her to 
Mrs. O’Kelly’s that night when she had hurried home after the ball 
to her father’s death-bed. Another time she would be pleased to see 
the kind old neighbor, but she felt that at sight of her now she must 
break down. She felt as eager to be gone as she had been an hour 
ago to make her way to this spot; and summoning Bridget, she hast- 
ened out of the street, nor thought of where she was going till she 
found herself pausing before the entrance into the shabby old church 
where, as child and girl, she had prayed. 

She stood at the gate a few moments, looking up as if at a strange 
building. Had she ever noticed in the old time those two large keys 
carved in the stone-work — Peter’s keys, she kneyr — the keys of heav- 
en? They looked now as if they had been crossed, like bars, to shut 
the sinner out beyond the gate they guarded. And. yet she would 
dare to go in, she would not be thrust out. 

“ Sure, miss, it’s an ugly ould chapel; there’s far purtier ones all 
round the city,” whispered Bridget, to whom this was a sight-seeing 
expedition. But she followed the young lady into the church, and 
dropped on her knees in a corner and pulled out her beads, while 
Marcella walked slowly, with bowed head and eyelids scarcely raised 
up the old familiar nave, and knelt down on one of the worm-eaten 
benches, and remembered her old sorrows and struggles and fears, 
and thought of them as bliss compared with the agony through which 
she was living now. Then she could pray, and depart comforted. 
Now she dared not pray, and there was no comfort for the obstinate 
sinner. Slowly her gaze moved round the walls, following along that 
Way of the Cross which in other days her feet had travelled with 
chifdlike faith and unreasoning hope. Why had faith and hope de- 
parted from her now? Why could she no longer travel that Way of 
the Cross on her knees as she had done on the morning after she had 
first succored him, offering her prayers for him, and leaving him 
safe in the hands of a God who knew all his difficulty? Why? 
Because she had sinned for him, and was going to sin more deeply 


THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS. 


117 


for his sake. Because she had allowed his life to become dearer to 
her than her soul. How should God he with her in this struggle 
when she had shut her lips to prayer and opened them to perjury? 
With Bryan safe and well by her side, could she evermore dare to 
pray ? W ould not God cut her off for all eternity ? Would not Bryan 
himself learn to hate her for her crime? And yet to hang Bryan with 
her own hand, to lift up her voice and give the signal for the mur- 
der of her love! She could not do it. Even with the dear Christ 
turning his dying eyes on her from yonder Cross, she could not 
promise to think of it. A blinding conviction that she was lost, 
body and soul, ruined before God and man, smote her like the blow 
of a mailed fist, and a death-like faintness seized her brain, her senses. 

The church was empty now of all but the two women, and in her 
distant corner Bridget heard a faint cry as Marcella called on the 
name of the Saviour, and slipped away off her knees upon the narrow 
floor between the benches, where the old servant presently found 
her, lying stiff and cold in a swoon. 


CHAPTER XX. 

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS. 

The morning after her walk through the city with Bridget, Mar- 
cella received a message in her room that a gentleman requested an 
interview with her on business. Expecting another encounter with 
Mr. O’Malley, she went slowly down-stairs, trembling, but with head 
erect, and entered the study, looking more like a ghost than a mortal 
woman. However, the visitor proved to be Bryan’s solicitor, not the 
chief of the police. 

His errand was to tell her that Mr. Kilmorey wished to see her 
alone. Not even his mother was to be present at the meeting, vir- 
tually not even the warder, who could be relied on to keep sufficient- 
ly at a distance to allow of a private conversation. Mr. Kilmorey 
had something very important to say to Miss O’Kelly. 

She lost no time, but set out at once for Kilmainham with Bridget. 

Dismissing her conveyance at the gate of the Old Men’s Hospital, 
she walked through that peaceful enclosure of ancient walls and 
green lawns and alleys, and saw the aged pensioners sitting in the 
sun, or doing a bit of gardening, or tottering up and down under the 
trees, stick in hand, enjoying the balmy summer air and the feeble 
conceits of their own tranquil and over weary brains. Death could 
not be far away from some of these; but they were ripe to go, must 
be ready, and were, maybe, eager for a renewal of the youth which 
had long ago been drained out of their veins. But Bryan. O God! 
which of these old men, so carefully nurtured here, had in the whole 
space of his long life done one-tliird of the service to his fellow-men 
■which Bryan had accomplished in his shorter span? And yet they 


118 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


wanted to thrust him out of the world, to put him to death as a male- 
factor who could not, for the safety of others, be suffered to enjoy 
the light of the sun! Travelling through a long, green lane of shade 
under high arching trees, an ideal summer walk for coolness and 
peace, she emerged suddenly from under an ancient archway upon 
the high-road of Kilmainham, and saw the prison staring her in the 
face. 

Oh that cruel front of granite and iron, those envious barred win- 
dows and bitter gates! How many a savage injustice had been 
wrought behind them! — how often had the innocent herded with 
murderers and gone to the scaffold branded with guilt, while the in- 
former, with blood-stained hands and blood-guilty heart, came forth 
into the light of heaven, and heard the birds sing once more in the 
blue air, and saw the flowers bloom again on the green! After a 
great ringing of bells, rattling of keys, and clanging of gates, the 
two women, having satisfactorily answered the questions put to 
them, were admitted to the inner precincts of the prison. 

The key grated in the lock of Bryan’s cell, the door was thrown 
open, and she saw him. The warder said, respectfully, ‘ ‘ When you 
want to get out, miss, you can tap at the door — I’ll be just outside; 
not rightly outside, I mean, but out of hearing. ” And the man, who 
was from Kilmorey’s county, whose father was still a tenant of Kil- 
morey’s, and whose sympathies were with the prisoner, closed the 
door behind him, where he stood on the threshold, and left the pris- 
oner and his visitor to all intents and purposes alone. And that 
they might be reassured on the subject of his deafness to their con- 
versation, he whistled softly between his teeth the tune of the ‘ ‘ W ear- 
ing o’ the Green ” during the entire duration of the interview. 

Within the narrow limits of four cold stone walls, whose unbroken 
whiteness made the eyes ache and swim, she saw Bryan stretch- 
ing out his hands to draw her towards him, and the first conscious 
thought in her mind, as she stood for a moment silently looking at 
him, was that she had never seen his gray eyes look so blue under 
the shadow of his grave brows; that they were as blue as a child’s 
eyes, or as the lake of Inisheen. Then there were a few minutes of 
inevitable and immeasurable joy for both which all the impending 
horrors of the future could not kill, while they stood hand-in-hand, 
seeing no prison walls, only the purple hills, and the flying clouds, 
and the laughing sea around them, till the tragedy of their lives stalk- 
ed at last between and put them asunder, and they sat gazing at each 
other dumbly across its presence. 

When the little flush of gladness had faded away from her young 
face, he saw how hollow her cheeks had grown, how pale her lips, 
and noticed the dark shadows that had settled round her eyes. 
Even the half-starved Marcella of the Liberties never looked so great 
a wreck as this. 

“My love,” he said, “you have been killing yourself. You will 
not leave me a chance for my own life. If you drop into your grave 
before even the trial comes on, what have I to live for?” 

“For your mother, for yourself, perhaps for some other woman, 


THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS. 


119 


who will love you more wisely than I know how to do. I do not 
care, so that I am spent in saving you.” 

“There could be no other woman for me in such a case. There 
is no other for me in any case. You are my beginning and my end. 
If you waste yourself away, I shall be left solitary.” 

Marcella smiled a little, chiefly for the hope that underlay his 
speech. 

“ You see I am determined to live,” he went on, smiling to see her 
smile, “and you must not refuse to live also, unless you are anxious 
to give me over to that other woman.” 

She tightened her clasp on his hand, to which she was holding as 
if she felt death already trying to undo her grip. 

“ Dear, I have asked you to come that we may talk about this. 
It is not altogether fear for me that is killing you, Marcella, for I 
know how brave you are — I have reason to know it. There is some- 
thing else that is gnawing your life away. Dearest, it is that false- 
hood, which we must have done with.” 

Marcella’s face drooped to her breast, and her attempt to speak, 
ended in a faint muttering. She withdrew her hand from his, locked, 
her own together, and sat silent. 

“ Speak, Marcella; say something to me!” 

She raised her head again, and looked at him with a look of suf- 
fering that seemed to see him afar off, and as if not belonging to* 
her. 

“You have nothing to do with that,” she said. “It is my own 
affair.” 

“How is it not my affair? Are your truth and your falsehood 
not my affair, especially when they are to affect, or intended to af- 
fect, my fate?” 

“My conscience is my own, like my life. I hold both in my 
hand. Even you cannot make me speak if I choose to be silent, 
nor make me live if I am to die.” 

He breathed a hard sigh, and looked at her as she sat with her 
locked hands, as if mutely pleading before the bar of a judgment 
from which she expected no mercy; and he noted her pale, sharp- 
ened, young features, the strung mouth, the dark locks uncurled by 
the dew of agony lying heavy upon her brow, the eyes large and 
strange with woe, startled out of their habitual softness by a horror 
always confronting them. 

“My dearest, dearest love, give me those little fierce hands; they 
look as if they were locked against me as fast as the prison gates ; 
let me hold them while I talk to you. What! are you angry at me, 
or afraid of me, because you think I am going to say something 
hard? You know you cannot live and breathe without knowing 
every moment that I love you. My love for you is beyond what is 
common among men. I am not a man who loves a woman every 
year, or every five, or every ten years. As I said before, you are the 
whole of woman’s love to me ; and I felt it the first moment I looked 
at you, felt it without knowing it when I saw you standing, pitying 
and protecting me in that old room in the Liberties— me, who felt 


120 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


all unneedful of pity— do not start and look over your shoulder ; 
no one hears now, but all the world must soon hear — and felt it 
again more consciously when I met your eyes in the crowd that other 
night at the top of the staircase in the Castle. Since then you have 
grown round the very roots of my heart. Every hair of your bonny 
head is precious to me, every movement of your lips is sweet; the 
beauty of your eyes and their tenderness make my delight. You 
are everything to me, short of nothing but only my honor and my 
soul ; or rather the highest part of my love for you is bound up 
with my honor and my soul. Give me your hands, sweetest love, 
and let me hold them fast while I say the rest of what I have to say 
to you. It is hard to say, and hard to hear, but it must be said. 
In this I am stronger than you, as I ought to be; for I am the man, 
and I must be the master. "Your will must be my will if you love 
me at all, and so — Marcella, you must not commit perjury!” 

She sat quite still and unmoved ; her hands lay limp in his strong 
grasp; she would not even raise her eyes to see the passion of plead- 
ing in his gaze. She knew his love without telling, yet the out- 
pouring of it would have been an exquisite delight to her at any 
other moment. Now the sweetness was like music heard a long 
way too far off, or like excessive fragrant perfume scattered by a 
fierce wind. All of it that touched her sounded like the wooing of 
a love that wooed them both to death. She could not open her 
heart to it. 

“Marcella, lift up your dear eyes and look me in the face.” 

She raised them with the same wild, piteous gaze she had turned 
towards the dying Christ on the cross in the church ; only her eyes 
ventured to look this man in the face, who was only man, however 
godlike he seemed to her, while they had n.ot dared to rise higher 
than the pierced feet of the pitiful Redeemer of men. 

“ We must not endure sin. You and I, who are one in heart and 
mind, will not commit crime to prove our innocence. I am inno- 
cent now; what should I be if I were to buy my life with perjury, 
any one’s perjury, let alone yours? We must not stand up before 
God and man and deny the truth.” 

“ I have already denied it,” said Marcella, quickly, and withdrew 
away from him a little as if she felt herself unworthy to be so near 
him, and would run before her sentence to meet her punishment. 

‘ ‘ I know it, and that is why I made efforts to talk to you alone 
on this subject. You will not do it again?” 

She stood up straight before him with a resolute movement; but 
her eyes faltered away from his again, and she fixed them blankly 
on the blinding white wall. 

“What is truth?” she said, with suppressed vehemence. “The 
truth is that you are innocent. Why should I tell a story that will 
make you appear guilty— the story of a wretched accident which 
will seem to mean every false thing that your enemies desire? You 
told me yourself that it would be, if known, the strongest corrobo- 
rative evidence against you. Mr. O’Malley thinks so, I know by the 
way he hungers for it. I have intelligence enough myself to see 


THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS. 


121 


that it would ruin you. And you — you would have death from my 
hand — but you shall not have it. Leave me with my sin to God. 
When all is over, he will deal with me.” 

“When all is over?” 

“ When you are saved and free.” 

“ And you?” 

She looked in his face, and her heart, with all its fiery eagerness, 
grew suddenly cold. She had expected that look she now thought 
she saw, dreamed of it, cried out against it, nerved herself to bear 
it; but now she had confronted it, she felt it to be her death-war- 
rant. 

“Me?” she said, faintly. “I shall have then passed out of your 
life forever. I have felt from the first that you could not love a 
wicked woman, a woman who could lie even to save you. I think 
I saw that on your stern brows even the first moment I looked 
at you. I did not know then what it was that I saw, but now I 
know. After I have saved you by my sin, 1 shall have lost you. 
Have I not said that God would have power to deal with me?” 

She turned her face to the wall with a movement of utter forlorn- 
ness, and leaned her forehead against the stone. 

Bryan stood silent a moment gazing at her, and then went to her 
and drew her towards him. 

“Love, love, you are talking wildly. Unless death takes one of 
us, our lives can never pass away from each other. Even in eter- 
nity I do not feel that we can be separated. All the more reason 
that I will not endure this sin. You cannot take it upon yourself, 
giving me, after having benefited by it, liberty to fling you away 
from my more rigid virtue because of the stain of it on your con- 
science. And yet you and I could have no peace with the shadow 
of it forever lying between us. We are both too keenly alive to the 
beauty and harmony of life regulated by the moral law to be able 
to smile in each other’s faces, while conscious of having gained our 
happiness by so hideous a lapse from it. You are sick now with 
sorrow; your brain is overwrought; you are a little mad with your 
passion for self-sacrifice; quite blinded by your thrice-blessed ten- 
derness and sweet concern for me. But just give up this struggle, 
and trust yourself to my guidance. We will weather this storm to- 
gether, but we will have the truth on our side. Look up at me, and 
see now if my brows are stern. Oh, love, love, love, would to God 
I could shelter you from this anguish that my rashness has brought 
upon you !” 

Marcella’s dry-eyed madness suddenly gave way, a rain of tears 
drenched her face, and she wept tempestuously on his shoulder. 

“Darling, you will promise to obey me?” 

“O God, I cannot!” 

He waited a few moments and let her weep her passion out, and 
meanwhile the warder’s whistling of the “Wearing o’ the Green” 
outside the scarce-closed door, filled the silence across her sobbing. 

“You will give me your word that you will speak the truth?” 

Her tears ceased and a long shudder shook her. 


122 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“Why, oh, why did you come to me on that hateful night, only 
that I might be your ruin?” 

“ Only that your love might be the crown of my life. Had they 
arrested me before I reached your door, the plot against me would 
have been developed a little sooner, that is all, and I should have 
died, if I am to die, without having known the highest joy of living. 
But, my dear, it has not been made certain yet that I am to die. 
The truth on our side, we will fight the matter out with courage.” 

“My courage is all dead.” 

“No, it is not dead, it has only swooned with too much horror. 

If it were dead I should be left a forlorn and disappointed man to 
do battle alone. But if I know you at all, you will not desert me.” 

“ I will not desert you.” 

“Then give me your word. Say, on the day when I am called 
on to stand up before the world and speak, ‘I will not bear false 
witness.’ ” 

“ O God, O pitiful God!” 

“Yes, dear, there is a God, and he is pitiful. Say the words I 
have put to you, ‘ I will not bear false witness.’ ” 

“ I will not bear false witness,” said Marcella, mechanically. 

“That is my brave darling. And, Marcella, sweetheart, listen to 
me, for we have only a few minutes more to be alone, remember 
that on your courage in that moment much may depend for us. 
Truth is great, and innocence ought to be brave.” 

“If I am there, I will be brave. My bearing shall not do you 
wrong,” and she thought as she spoke that perhaps she should not 
be there, might be dead in the mercy of Heaven before that unim- 
aginable hour should arrive. 

“I am sure of it. And now, sweetest, truest, and dearest, you 
must leave me. The warder has given the signal that time is up,” 
said Kilmorey, as the piping of the pathetic melody which had 
twined itself all through their conversation suddenly ceased, and 
Bridget’s stoutly shod feet could be heard upon the flags outside 
the door. And Marcella, stunned with the weight of the pledge 
she had given, allowed herself to be dismissed and led away. 

After she was gone Kilmorey sat looking at the spot where she 
had stood, thinking more of the love that had so strongly resisted 
him than of the victory he had won or its consequences. He had 
long ago thought out his case thoroughly, and made up his mind to • 
the worst. By nature he was singularly brave, only needing to 
know the worth of his aim, and taking no heed to count the cost of 
effort; possessing all the daring qualities of the Irishman born to 
be a soldier, but qualified for daily uses by the thoughtful reasoning 
of the philosopher. The development, more or less full, of what- 
ever high purpose a man might put before him, had always seepied 
to him the chief reason for a thinking man’s existence, and he had 
easily perceived that in any onward or upward struggle of the 
masses there must always be a pile of slain on which others press- 
ing forward can mount to clear the breach. If the lot to fall had 
been cast for him, why, let him take it, and go down like a man. 


THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS. 


123 


This, a year ago, had been his attitude clearly cut against the hori- 
zon of his future, and the order to march, as he put it to himself, 
would have found him ready, with few weakening regrets beyond 
those which were inevitably linked with the suffering of his mother. 

But as he now sat meditating in his cell, he was cruelly aware 
that, in the last six months, life, mere personal life, had gained a 
sweetness and a rich vigor for him never known before. Existence 
had taken the colors of a poet’s dream ; the beauty which still walk- 
eth on the earth and air had captivated his senses; the light that 
never was on sea or shore had fallen on his path; his heart had 
flowered into a love that craved for all that human happiness 
which he had only thought of before as the impediment and hin- 
derance of weaker men. As he sat on his prison- bed, his elbow on 
his knee, his head on his hand, and looked for an hour — time is not 
precious in a prison-cell — at that spot of the floor where Marcella’s 
feet had rested, he acknowledged that it were keenly sweet to live, 
and that the victory he had so hardly gained over the madness of a- 
woman’s love, strong in her weakness to do wrong for his sake, was 
a terrible victory, the crown of which burned his brows with a tort- 
uring flame. 

He still felt the touch of her hand on his; the light of her face 
shone on him ; it seemed as if her breath still made sweet the air of 
this small chill square of all space into which his manhood was 
cramped. She was gone out into the sunshine of the autumn world 
like a crushed flower, and there was only that door, a little wood 
and iron, to keep him from following her with reviving joy in his 
gift. If he could but pass that door, what a life they might lead in 
some country untouched by the curse that blighted all effort for 
good in Ireland! They two, under some rare blue ridge of Switzer- 
land, or in some ripe wild garden of Italy, or cool, pict uresque court 
of sunny Spain; they two, hand-in-hand, and heart to heart, in har- 
mony with all beautiful things, thankful and worshipful towards 
Heaven, enjoying with passion the beauties and the sweetnesses of 
life, leaving behind them all effort to do good, here so thankless and 
cruelly repaid, and only life, life, life in their full hands, to expend 
upon one another through all the fruitful teeming years. 

The strong man crushed his hands together in an ecstasy of suf- 
fering,’ to think that all this might have been, and never now could 
• be, his. In this hour of his temptation all his old generous theories 
had left him. To die for the good of many did not seem so right 
to him as to live for the good of one — of two. To die? To be 
thrust out from the light of the sun, the swell of the sea, the rush of 
the air, out of all further knowledge of his love, blotted from her 
face, deaf to her call, cut off forever beyond her reach; no cries, no 
answers, no faintest echo of sympathy between them throughout 
the whole universe for evermore ; to have but tasted the first drops 
of living happiness, and have the cup dashed down and broken; 
this, and not the knotting of the disgraceful cord, or nature’s resist- 
ing throe in yielding up the ghost, was death. 

And what was life that he should be counted unworthy to hold 


124 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


it, the common gift shared by the commonest thing that stirred in 
the sun? Life, liberty ; the fly that buzzed in through the small 
aperture half-way up the smooth white wall above his head, and 
buzzed out again, had both. As he followed its coming and going 
with interest, he fell to musing on the wonderful beauty of life, mere 
life, as part of a living universe. He thought of the eagle on the 
mountain at Inisheen, and the thrush in the garden at Crane’s Castle, 
and the happy wild gull riding the waves; and then his mind’s eye 
looked lower, to the rabbit scampering in the heather, the butterfly 
wheeling her painted wings on the air, the darting bat and humming 
night -moth; even the snail creeping out at will from under lush 
leaves after the rain grew to be a miracle of free enjoyment as he 
pondered on its happy existence. Remorsefully he thought of how 
his gun had often brought down the glad wild birds from their soar- 
ing delight to cruel annihilation, and hated himself for such murder. 
God had given, and God alone should take away, the life of a happy 
sentient being. 

He looked at his own hand, the strong right hand of man, the full 
throbbing veins, the fine tingling nerves, the thrilling fingers, ex- 
quisitely adapted for a thousand uses. This, too, was destined to 
be limp and cold, to whiten, and then to rot. 

The cell had grown quite dark, though outside in the wide fields 
round Kilmainham the autumn twilight lingered, when a bird, be- 
lated by some chance on its way home to woods farther out into the 
country, perched on the bar of the high prison window and began 
to sing his even-song. 

What is it in the song of a bird that suggests immortality? As the 
prisoner listened, the despair of his soul gave way, and that thought 
thrilled through him expressed by King David in the words, “I re- 
membered God, and I was delighted.” 

When the bird had finished and flown away, Kilmorey drew his 
hand across his eyes, and was not ashamed of a tear only known to 
himself and an unseen Heaven. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

IN THE DOCK. 

Autumn, so bewitching in Ireland, with the rare violets of morn- 
ing and evening mists, the dewy brilliance of its foliage under 
heavens of tender gray, and its late bird-songs, had disappeared be- 
hind the verge of winter, and the shortening and darkening days 
had brought the gentry of Dublin back to squares and streets, out 
of the neighboring country. The approaching trials of the men in 
prison for the murder of Mr. Ffont were looked forward to as some- 
thing sensational in the way of trials by such people (who are to be 
found in every community) as take a morbid pleasure in events of 
the kind. In this case the fact that a gentleman was one of the ac- 


IN THE DOCK. 


125 


cused enhanced the general interest in the matter, and genteel Dub- 
lin had something to talk about while it cleaned its windows — a hap- 
py feat, in general too rarely accomplished — and hung up its lace 
curtains, and did not arrange its window flower-boxes, because gen- 
teel Dublin despises the graceful custom cherished elsewhere as one 
of the fairest signs of civilized living, that of clothing the grim stone- 
work of its window-sills with a little fringe of bloom. The reason 
is difficult to seek, in a sentimental and beauty-loving population. 
Poverty has been pleaded as an apology for the dark, gaunt exterior 
of our dwellings, yet how easily a few shillings or pounds are spent 
on some tawdry delight. In poorer homes on the outskirts of the 
city, sometimes even in wretched lanes, one sees windowfuls of 
flowers; but the mansions of the upper ten remain guiltless of such 
frivolity. An exception here and there proves the rule; and one 
blesses the individual who breaks the grim law which says, ‘ ‘ Thy 
dwelling, if respectable, must be dingy and unlovely,” and flings out 
a handful of beauty to gladden the eye of the passer-by. 

The long interval of weeks between the autumn day when Bryan 
had striven with the madness in her, and conquered, and the time 
appointed for the trial had been a great part spent by Marcella on a 
bed of fever, from which she had risen stronger and calmer in mind, 
if shattered in body. As soon as the crisis of the illness was past, 
and her mind was delivered from delirium, her evidence had been 
given from her sick-bed — that damning evidence against Kilmorey 
which she had hoped death might have enabled her to withhold. 
She had not died, however, and now that the worst she could do 
had been done, the next best thing to dying with her cruel tale un- 
told was to grow strong and help him to fight out his battle to the 
bitter end. This she set herself to accomplish in as far as was pos- 
sible, that she might not, through faltering and weakness, disgrace 
him and herself by a seeming consciousness of guilt in him. 

Early in December the trials opened in the old court-house in 
Green Street, situated among the slums on the north side of the 
city. Before Kilmorey’s turn arrived two men, Fenians, were tried, 
also for the murder of Mr. Ffont, and were convicted without diffi- 
culty and sentenced to death. Two others of the same band had 
saved their lives by offering to inform on Kilmorey, and were to be 
produced on his trial as chief evidence against him. And one rainy, 
miserable morning an immense crowd, fashionable and unfashiona- 
ble, men and women, thronged the dingy court-house to suffocation, 
for the pleasure, pain, or curiosity of seeing Bryan Kilmorey take 
his stand in the dock 

There were two judges on the bench: one small, keen, gray-feat- 
ured, unpopular, with a reputation for inhuman eagerness to convict; 
the other large, placid, deprecating, with an indescribable expression 
in his eyebrow, which somehow conveyed the idea to the wretches 
who hung upon his looks and words that he would always be will- 
ing to save a prisoner when he could, and that to pronounce a hard 
sentence almost gave him his death-blow. To Marcella, sitting veil- 
ed in black in a corner of the court, they both looked, in their long 


126 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


gray wigs and ermines, simply wolves in sheep’s clothing, and noth- 
ing more. 

Miss O’Donovan sat beside Marcella, and exchanged greetings with 
her fashionable friends, whose eye-glasses were often levelled at the 
pale face of the heiress of Distresna. It was decided that Miss 
O’Kelly made an unnecessary display of her interest in the prisoner, 
unless, indeed, she were engaged to him, as had been rumored, only 
that seemed too absurd to be true. No girl would engage herself to 
a man on his trial for murder — at least no girl like this, with the 
world at her feet. However, sitting there, with her drooped eyelids, 
raised only at times in the direction of the prisoner, or for a swift, 
proud, wide-eyed glance round the crowded court, she made a point 
of keen interest in the drama — the more so as the part she played 
was not at all clearly understood. 

The prisoner stood in the dock, slightly leaning forward, with his 
arms folded and resting on the bench in front of him. Except for 
traces of mental suffering in the dark shadows about his eyes, he 
looked well, with the air of a man who knew how to be brave in ad- 
versity. 

Sergeant Fitzgerald opened the case for the prosecution with a 
grave reference to the position of the prisoner at the bar as a gentle- 
man and land-owner, and spoke of his late father as one whom many 
remembered and esteemed for his genial and social qualities. He 
himself (Sergeant Fitzgerald) had known the late Mr. Kilmorey, 
and was thankful that his old friend was not alive to see this mel- 
ancholy day. After hasty but effective use of a white pocket-hand- 
kerchief, the learned counsel proceeded to state the circumstances 
arrayed against Bryan Kilmorey ^ showing him to be guilty of the 
murder of his fellow-man, and, still worse, his fellow-landlord: “It 
was not all in a day that this young man had quitted honest ways 
and wandered into paths of abysmal darkness and crime. Though 
the son of a father who had been content to live peaceably on his 
estate, and take things as he found them, Bryan Kilmorey had early 
shown proclivities leading him to evil companionship and disreputa- 
ble practices. While still a mere youth he had joined the Fenian 
society, and had stolen from his father’s house at night to learn the 
use of fire-arms for wicked purposes, drilling with some of the low- 
est of the population in secret recesses of his native mountains. 

‘ ‘ His evil courses being discovered by his father, he was sent to a 
university, thus getting a chance to put himself straight, a chance 
which does not come in the way of all youthful wrong-doers. How- 
ever, though it must be acknowledged that while at college Kilmo- 
rey distinguished himself and won good opinions, socially as well 
as intellectually, yet so deeply did the dark stain which had early 
appeared in him run through all his actions that, on his return to 
Ireland after a lapse of some years, we find him renewing his con- 
nection with Fenianism, and identifying himself with so-called Na- 
tionalists in politics. Yet he had learned caution; and so carefully 
did he proceed that but little evidence exists of the communication 
which since that time he has undoubtedly carried on with the lead- 


IN THE DOCK. 


127 


ers of communism and socialism. One, however, will presently ap- 
pear in the witness-box who will make startling revelations on this 
point. 

“ After his respected and lamented father’s death, Bryan Kilmo- 
rey quitted the respectable roof under which he had been reared, 
and, leaving it to ruin and decay, withdrew himself from all the 
pleasant social ways of his neighbors and old friends, and burrowed, 
if I may be permitted to use the expression, in a rude dwelling 
among the barren rocks of a small island, mysteriously placed, as if 
intended by Nature for the home of a pirate or conspirator, in the 
waters of a lonely lake among the mountains of Connemara. Why 
he deserted the open highways of the world and preferred to hide 
himself in this savage dwelling will presently be seen. His father’s 
wealth disappeared; it was not spent upon himself, nor upon that 
unhappy lady, his mother, who had followed him, with a mother’s 
devotion, to his unnatural lurking-place. It had disappeared into 
the coffers of the secret societies to encourage the manufacture of 
dynamite, to purchase the secret gun for the skulking murderer, 
to fee the wretch who lies in wait for his victim behind the— the — 
the aroma of the flowering hedge-rows ! 

‘ ‘ But the secret society whose oath he had taken, to obey whose 
orders he had pledged himself, is not satisfied with any one particu- 
lar service from its votaries, but must have all it demands, and at the 
moment when it chooses to make its demand. It was decreed by 
the iniquitous councils of such a society that Mr. Gerald Ffrench 
Ffont was to die, and the lot to personally conduct, if I may use a 
modern phrase, this atrocious murder fell upon Mr. Bryan Kilmorey. 
That he did not attempt to shirk this awful responsibility I think we 
shall be able to prove. That he cunningly took every precaution to 
hide his guilty part in the transaction will also be made plain in this 
court. The deed was not done in the country, where Kilmorey was 
known by appearance to every one, but in the crowded slums of the 
city of Dublin, where his escape from detection was more likely 
to be assured. On a dark winter’s night Mr. Ffont’s steps were dog- 
ged, and he was cruelly done to death by a band of assassins, four 
of whom were seized, while one, the ringleader, was known to have 
mysteriously escaped. ” 

Counsel then went on to describe the flight of Kilmorev, and the 
search made for him by the police in a house where he had taken 
refuge — a search which proved fruitless, in consequence, as it would 
be seen, of the circumstance that a secret closet existed in that house, 
and also thanks to the skill and devotion of friends of the fugitive, 
who were then dwelling in that house. 

“ But the sword of justice, parried though it may be for a time by 
the — the spasmodic efforts of treachery and guilt, will in time, prov- 
identially, find its way home at last,” continued the learned sergeant. 
“ Some one has aptly said, ‘though the mills of God grind slowly, 
yet they grind exceeding small,’ and so, after almost a year of de- 
lay and difficulty, the chain of evidence against this unhappy young 
man is complete. Evidence to corroborate the story which the in- 


128 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


formers have got to tell will not be found wanting, and proof the 
most conclusive of his guilt is about to be laid before this court and 
the world.” 

The above slight sketch gives but a faint idea of the length, force, 
and conclusiveness of the story told by Sergeant Fitzgerald in open- 
ing the case for the prosecution. His words were listened to with 
breathless interest, and the general feeling in court when he sat down 
was that no attempt from the other side could do away with the ef- 
fect of such an indictment. The voice of the accuser, raised as much 
in sorrow as in anger, broken with emotion, or swelling with right- 
eous wrath, was in itself a powerful engine of the outraged law. 
That the old friend of the prisoner’s father should find himself 
obliged to arraign and condemn the erring son seemed in itself over- 
whelming testimony of the guilt of the accused. 

A considerable number of witnesses were called for the prosecu- 
tion, besides the Fenian informers, who gave evidence to prove the 
truth of some of Sergeant Fitzgerald’s statements. It was true that 
young Kilmorey had become a Fenian at sixteen years of age; true 
that his father had done all in his power to break the dangerous con- 
nection his son had formed; equally true that the late Mr. Kilmorey 
had been quite unable to accomplish this object, and had, in conse- 
quence, died of a broken heart. All this was triumphantly proved 
by Fenian as well as other testimony, and who should know better 
than the Fenians themselves? The counsel for the defence did not 
make any attempt to shake the evidence of the prisoner’s early Fen- 
ianism, though a few telling points were elicited in cross-examina- 
tion as to the habits of Mr. Kilmorey, senior, and the cause of his 
death ; but the informer who witnessed to the prisoner’s intercourse 
with the heads of secret societies, and the renewal of his allegiance 
to Fenianism in its more modern and deadly form, after the father’s 
death and the arrival of the younger man at years of maturity, was 
> somewhat roughly shaken by the prisoner’s counsel. 

And then, towards the close of the first day’s proceedings, the plot 
thickened, and the witnesses for the prosecution who could tell the 
tale of what occurred on the night of the murder of Gerald Ffrench 
Ffont, having been concerned in the affair themselves, and gained 
their pardon by turning Queen’s evidence, were put in the witness- 
box, one after the other, and their examination and cross-examina- 
tion had not come to an end when the court was under necessity of 
rising for that evening. 

According to their story, Mr. Ffont, who had been a hard man as 
well as a bad landlord, having fairly earned by his inhuman conduct 
the detestation of the people living at his mercy, had been tried, 
found guilty, and sentenced to death by the society which sits in 
judgment on such tyrants. The lot to conduct the murder, and see 
that it was properly carried out, had fallen upon Mr. Bryan Kilmorey, 
and he was bound by his oath to obey orders. On the night of the 
murder he was on the spot, and gave the signal to fire on Mr. Ffont. 
The police coming quickly upon them, the band of assassins sepa- 
rated and fled. They, the informers, who had been of the band, did 


IN THE DOCK. 


129 


not know, of their own knowledge, where Mr Kilmorey had taken 
refuge, but they believed that he had friends in the neighborhood 
prepared to receive and hide him. This was the evidence of the two 
informers, given with abundance of detail, aud sifted and searched 
in cross-examination by the counsel for the defence, without any 
noteworthy appearance of breaking down 

Marcella kept her eyes fixed on the faces of the informers all the 
time of their examination, and one of them especially excited her hor- 
ror. He was a pallid, consumptive-looking creature, with narrow, 
sharp - featured face, and shifting eyes that never seemed to look 
straight at anything. He gave his evidence with a certain dogged 
air of determination — a great deal of meaning in a few words, which 
carried force with it for the moment, and impressed court and jury 
with a belief in the truth of his story. He appeared to resent his po- 
sition as an informer, and made his statements with a bitterness that 
seemed to wish them unsaid. All this, which told strongly with his 
audience, roused in Marcella a sense of amazed loathing which al- 
most suffocated her, and her fascinated gaze remained riveted to his 
evil countenance so long that it became imprinted on her brain with 
a vividness not likely to be effaced while she lived. 

When he ceased speaking and was removed, a faintness seized her, 
and it required all her strength of will to stave off the swoon which 
would have made her an object of curiosity to the court. 

When she had mastered the weakness so far as to be able to raise 
her eyes and emerge from her corner, she found that Bryan had van- 
ished from the dock, that the court had risen, and that people were 
pressing out of the court-house; and she followed in the wake of the 
crowd, to pass the dreadful night as best she might. 

The next morning she was in her place again, listening to the final 
examination and cross-examination of the informer Barrett, whose 
foul, false testimony she was now to be commanded to corroborate. 
When her name was called, there was a sudden dead silence in court, 
then a flutter of whispers and pressing forward of faces as every one 
asked his neighbor if he had heard aright. The sensation was so 
great that for a few moments everything was at a stand still. Mar- 
cella heard the sound of the smothered excitement of numbers, like 
the hissing of a great wave about to overwhelm her, aud then was 
conscious of nothing but Bryan’s smile of encouragement straining 
towards her from his isolated standing-place in the dock. 

So well had the secret been kept, that when Miss O’Kelly arose 
and left her seat to take her place in the witness-box the crowd was 
at a loss to know whether she were going to give testimony against 
or in favor of Kilmorey. 

Considering all the circumstances, the latter conclusion was jump- 
ed at by the majority, and there was a momentary revulsion of feel- 
ing in favor of the prisoner. 

This girl, this heiress, this wayward heroine, had got in her pow- 
erful little hand some telling piece of evidence in favor of her friend, 
perhaps her lover. She was going to prove an alibi, or to attempt to 
prove one. A wave of sympathy went towards her as she took her 
9 


130 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


stand in the witness-box and threw back her black gauze veil, which 
made an inky framework for her deathly white features. 

With her large dark eyes wide open and fixed on some distant 
point before her, she looked like one in a trance. “ She will faint,” 
was whispered among the younger barristers, and a glass of water 
was placed beside her, which, however, she did not see. “ Why does 
she look so terribly if she is going to help him?” asked one woman 
of another. No one noticed for the moment that it was as a witness 
for the prosecution she had been called. Mr. Shine, junior counsel 
for the prosecution, raised his face towards that spot in the court 
from where the soft eyes of Miss Eyre were gazing down full of 
sympathy at the witness, and got in return a glance which seemed to 
say that things were beginning to take a good turn — good at least in 
the estimation of this young lady, whose interest in Marcella had be- 
guiled her into becoming a spectator of the scene. 

At the sound of the counsel’s voice directing his first question tow- 
ards Miss O’Kelly, an absolute hush fell on the audience, and intense 
and breathless silence reigned in the court. % 


CHAPTER XXII. 

CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE. 

“Miss O’Kelly — ” Counsel’s voice trembled a little, and he 
paused for a second. He was a father of daughters, and knew some- 
thing of the story of this girl, whose heart, now laid bare to his knife, 
he was bound to lacerate. 

“Miss O’Kelly, I shall be obliged to ask you a few questions as to 
your own personal history. Your real name is not O’Kelly, but was 
assumed in compliance with the desires of the deceased lady whose 
heiress you have become. Is this so?” 

“It is so.” 

“ What is your real name?” 

“Marcella Grace.” 

“Up to the month of January last you had lived in rather poor 
circumstances?” 

“Very poor.” 

“What occupation did your father follow, and where did he live?” 

“He was a weaver of poplin. He lived in Weaver’s Square, in 
the Liberties of Dublin.” 

Here a deep breath was drawn by many in court. Ladies looked 
at each other in amazement, but there was no time to speak before 
the next question arose. 

“ And you lived with him there?” 

“ I lived with him there.” 

“Now, on your oath, Marcella Grace, do you remember the night 
of the 10th of January last?” 

“I remember it.” 


CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE. 


131 


“About eleven o’clock at night, or nearer to midnight, what were 
you doing in your home in Weaver’s Square?” 

“ Sewing.” 

“ Your father having gone to bed, you were quite alone?” 

“Quite alone.” 

“While you were sitting alone, sewing, you heard a knock at the 
door of your house, and you admitted a man who was flying from 
pursuit of the police?” 

“I did so.” 

“And you hid him in a secret closet in your house, according to a 
previous arrangement?” 

“There was no previous arrangement, because I never had seen 
him before that moment.” 

“But you hid him in the closet?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Now, on your oath, was that man whom you hid on the night of 
the 10th of January last the prisoner at the bar?” 

“ Yes.” 

A thrill like a wind passing over the reeds in a river went through 
the court, and then complete silence reigned as before. 

“ How long did he remain hidden in that closet?” 

“ Some three or four hours, as well as I can remember.” 

“And in the mean time the police searched the house, and were 
unable to find him?” 

“Yes.” 

“After they were gone you liberated this man whom you had 
sheltered from justice, and allowed him to go free?” 

“ I had sheltered him from pursuit, not from justice. And I al- 
lowed him to go free. ” 

“And afterwards you kept his secret, and continued to screen him, 
although you knew that murder had been done, and that justice was 
endeavoring to discover the guilty?” 

“Yes.” 

Again there was a sensation in the court, and the counsel waited 
till it subsided. 

“Miss Grace, did I understand you to say that till the moment 
when you opened your door to Mr. Kilmorey on that night in Janu- 
ary you had never laid eyes on him?” 

“I said so.” 

“You had no previous knowledge of him or his affairs?” 

“None.” 

“ Was not your father associated with the secret societies, and had 
not you yourself some knowledge of such people?” 

“ No; none. Nothing of the kind.” 

‘ ' Your father was in bed when you admitted Mr. Kilmorey. Was 
he then, or ever after, aware of your having taken such an extraor- 
dinary step?” 

“Neither then, nor ever after, till his death.” 

“He had no share in your successful attempt to deceive the po- 
lice?” 


132 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“ He had no share. He died in ignorance of it.” 

“Now tell me why you took such a strange responsibility on your- 
self. What induced you, a young girl in the house, late at night, to 
admit a stranger because he knocked at your door?” 

* ‘ Because I saw in his face, and heard in his voice, that he was 
good. ” 

“ Then it was merely on the strength of your instinctive belief in 
his goodness that you protected him and kept his secret?” 

“ Merely.” 

“Now tell me what was the second occasion on which you met 
this Mr. Bryan Kilmorey.” 

“ It was in the street, on the 11th of January.” 

“Indeed! The day after the murder. What did he then say to 
you?” 

“ He did not speak to me, nor even see me. He was reading the 
bills on a newspaper office at Cork Hill, as numbers of others were 
doing. And I just saw him, and passed him by.” 

“You read the notice of a reward offered, I presume. You were 
a very poor girl that day, Miss Grace. Did it not enter your mind 
that you might have easily earned a large sum of money?” 

‘ ‘ 1 was very poor, but honest. I believe I read of the reward, but 
I gave it no thought.” 

“ Now, what was the reason of this devoted adherence to the man, 
if, as you have said, he was a stranger whom you had never seen be- 
fore?” 

“I cannot tell you more than I have already said. I only thought 
that I had never seen another man who looked so good. And I 
have never seen one since. ” 

Counsel here glanced over some papers and changed the current 
of his questioning. 

“ It was about this time that the late Mrs. O’Kelly discovered her 
relationship to you and claimed you as her niece.” 

“ It was just the time.” 

“ What was the next occasion on which you met Mr. Bryan Kil- 
morey?” 

“At the St. Patrick’s ball, where I went with Mrs. O’Kelly.” 

“ On that occasion you danced with him — ” 

“ I do not know how to dance.” 

“Well, you spent some time in his company. Did he warn you 
to secrecy, or make any excuse for his conduct on the night of his 
first strange introduction to you?” 

“None.” 

“Did he make no allusion whatever to the affair?” 

“ He did not recognize me, and I was careful after the first that he 
should not do so.” 

“ Now, on your oath, did he not, immediately on the death of Mrs. 
O’Kelly, get you into his own keeping, and place you under the 
guardianship of his mother in his home at Inisheen?” 

“No.” 

“ Do you mean to say that you did not travel to Inisheen one week 


CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE. 


133 


after Mrs. O’Kelly’s death, having no acquaintance with Mrs. Kilmo- 
rey at the time, and Mrs. O’Kelly having left no injunctions to ac- 
count for your prompt action?” 

“ I do not mean to say so. Father Daly, and not Mr. Kilmorey, 
brought me to Inisheen.” 

“Without the knowledge of Kilmorey?” 

“Entirely without his knowledge, and because Mrs. Kilmorey was 
a friend of his own — that is, a friend of Father Daly’s.” 

Counsel again finding that he could make no further point in this 
direction, once more shifted the course of his attack. 

“Miss Grace, I require you to tell me what was the first occasion 
on which reference was made by Mr. Kilmorey to the secret which 
you held concerning him, and to your possible evidence on this 
trial.” 

“On the night of his arrest at Inisheen.” 

“ Do I understand you to say that during the six months in which 
you lived on friendly terms with and a good deal in the society of 
Mr. Kilmorey, he never alluded to the circumstances of his first 
meeting with you?” 

* ‘ He never did. He did not recognize me as the person he had so 
met.” 

“Not in all those months?” 

“Not until I told him on the night of his arrest.” 

“ And he then warned you to refuse to give evidence against him?” 

“No.” 

“When, then, did he do so?” « 

“ He never did so.” 

“Yet you denied the truth of much that you have now admitted, 
and expressed your willingness to swear an untruth?” 

“Yes-.” 

* * Who induced you to alter your mind and to give evidence 
against Mr. Kilmorey?” 

“ Mr. Kilmorey.” 

This reply startled both the court and the counsel so greatly that 
the latter repeated his question again in a more distinct form. 

“Mr. Kilmorey himself persuaded you to give evidence against 
him? Why do you suppose he did that?” 

“Because, as I have said before, he is good. He would have noth- 
ing but the truth.” 

“Are you not good enough yourself to tell the truth?” 

“I am not so good as he is.” 

“Now, Miss Grace, you have made some very strange confessions. 
Perhaps you will tell me what motive you had fo;* refusing to tell 
the truth, and for entertaining the intention of perjuring yourself? 
What influence had been brought to bear upon you?” 

Marcella flushed vividly, and then turned deadly pale, and her 
slight fingers locked themselves more tightly together. Counsel for 
the defence here interposed and urged that this question ought not 
to be pressed; but his opinion was overruled, and the examination 
went on. 


134 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“ From what point did the influence come which Jed you to deny 
your knowledge of the facts you have now admitted? If you are 
afraid or ashamed, take courage.” 

“I am not afraid or ashamed. The influence you speak of came 
only from the weakness of my own heart, Bryan Kilmorey is 
everything in the world to me, and I have promised to be his wife.” 

The thrilling excitement which here swept through the court went 
deeper than anything of the kind which had preceded it. The an- 
swer so rudely pressed and forced from the witness was quite unex- 
pected. But the sensation was quickly over. Curiosity to hear 
more soon restored general silence. 

“ So this man, who knew himself to be under suspicion of murder, 
who was aware that he must soon stand where he now stands, oc- 
cupied the interval in paying his addresses to a beautiful and wealthy 
young lady. On your oath, did he not try to induce you to fly 
from the country with him?” 

“No.” 

Here it became evident that the witness’s highly strung nervous 
tension was beginning to relax; and fearing a scene which might at- 
tract too much sympathy towards her, the counsel for the prosecu- 
tion intimated that he had nothing further to ask her at that mo- 
ment. A few questions in cross-examination from Bryan’s counsel 
enabled her to make several clear points as to the unselfishness of 
the prisoner’s dealing with her, and her belief in his entire innocence 
of the charge against him. An opportunity was also given her to 
jelate how Mike had warned her of danger to Mr. Kilmorey from 
the enmity of the Fenians. Until all was said, and nothing more 
was required of her, her courage never gave way. At last she was 
permitted to stand down, and hid herself in a private room of the 
' > go home until Bryan had been removed 



In the mean time the examination of witnesses went on, the in- 
formers were recalled and re-examined, and it was quite towards the 
end of the proceedings for that day when Mr. Gerald Sullivan, Q.C., 
counsel for the prisoner, opened the case for the defence. 

He began by sketching the career of Bryan Kilmorey from the 
moment when, as a rash, ardent youth, he joined the Fenians, till 
now when he stood in the dock a victim to the plots of a debased 
branch of Fenianism whose vengeance he had provoked by seceding 
from its rank. He described the origin of the Fenian Brotherhood. 
The name was borrowed from the Fenian band who were the standing 
army of ancient mythical Ireland. By their very name they were 
declared soldiers, and, after their dream of a romantic warfare had 
been rudely broken, many of them withdrew to peaceful aims, 
though still nominally Fenians. Many more passed their years as 
imbittered and disappointed, but still honorable men, in self-exile 
in various lands, while others, counsel was sorry to say, had formed 
themselves into criminal societies with a purpose which could not 
be justified by any law, human or divine. It was of the latter class 
that the prisoner had been so unfortunate as to provoke the anger. 


CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE. 


135 


His only defence against this charge was the statement that he had 
been lured into the toils of enemies in order that a case might be 
made up against him to his ruin. Of this Mr. Kilmorey had little 
proof to give beyond his own word. He could bring forward wit- 
nesses to testify to his blameless life, to the great elf orts he had made 
for the benefit of his people, impoverishing himself to give them a 
chance of improving their condition. It was in such ways that his 
money had been spent — all the money he could spare out of the 
mere remnant of a fortune left him by those who had recklessly 
squandered it to no good purpose. It was true that in politics he 
was a warm Nationalist; but when would the world be brought to 
draw a fair line between the strong Nationalist in Irish politics and 
the wretch whose soul, if not his hand, was dyed with the guilt of 
the assassin? Till that line was drawn, blunders, terrible and dead- 
ly, would continue to be made. 

Mr. Sullivan then referred to the night of the 10th of January, 
stating that on the same morning Bryan Kilmorey had received a 
note requesting him to visit an old tenant of his, one who had been 
in his father’s employment for years, and, having left the country to 
take service in Dublin, had fallen into poverty, and was lying ill in 
a poor room in a certain street in the Liberties. It was characteris- 
tic of Mr. Kilmorey that he went at the hour appointed — an hour so 
late as to be calculated to arouse suspicion only that the circum- 
stance was plausibly accounted for. That letter Mr. Kilmorey had 
unfortunately thrown into the fire almost as soon as read, having 
first made an entry in his note-book of the name and address of the 
sufferer who had appealed to him ; but it had undoubtedly been sent 
him to lure him to the scene of the murder, so that he might be 
pointed out to the police and arrested for the crime. 

“At the appointed hour Mr. Kilmorey was approaching the street 
indicated to him, when he heard a sudden outcry at some little dis- 
tance; and a voice of one who came running to meet him, a voice 
he thought he recognized, said to him urgently that there was a plot 
to compromise his good name, and he had better get out of the way 
for a few hours, as the police were almost upon him. To this he 
replied that he had done nothing wrong, and asked why he should 
fly. The answer was given, rapidly and pressingly. His enemies, 
he was told, were stronger than lie; there was no time for explana- 
tions, but his only safety from ruin lay in a prudent retreat. In the 
same moment the person who had given the warning fled on, and 
Bryan Kilmorey stood face to face with what he felt, only too likely 
to be the truth, seeing that he had again and again been warned that 
a plot was being hatched against him. Without waiting to consid- 
er further, lie knocked at the nearest door and asked to be admitted 
and sheltered for a few hours, till the danger, whatever it might be 
—a danger which had to himself at that moment the vaguest out- 
lines— should blow over. Mr. Kilmorey had since regretted this 
step; but it was naturally taken under the impulse to disappoint au- 
dacious trickery, and quietly to slip out 'of the evil hands that were 
almost laid on him, to escape without public brawl or disturbance. 


130 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“While Bryan Kilmorey remained in that closet which had been 
described, and knew that the police were searching the house for 
him, he regretted having sought such sanctuary; but he was well 
aware that he could only make matters worse by giving himself up 
at such a moment. Now it had been sought to prove that the in- 
mates of the house which admitted him were friends of his, leagued 
with him in crime; but after the evidence they had just listened to, 
no one present could doubt that, upon this strange occasion, the 
young lady whom they had heard and seen in the witness-box and 
the prisoner met for the first time. On the romantic circumstances 
of their later acquaintance, and the relations in which they now 
stood to one another, he would not dwell. It was too delicate a sub- 
ject for public handling, but he felt sure that the strong conviction 
in the mind of this innocent girl that the man to whom she had 
promised to devote her life was guiltless and good could not but 
have a serious importance in the considerations of the jury. Also, 
the startling circumstance that this young lady had been induced 
to give damaging evidence against Kilmorey by the persuasions of 
Kilmorey himself, must carry weight with it — an assurance of the 
integrity, not to say heroism, of the prisoner’s character.” 

After much more in the same strain from the prisoner’s counsel, 
that gentleman’s eloquence was interrupted by the rising of the 
court. 

The next morning, after the conclusion of his speech, the wit- 
nesses for the defence were examined, prominent among whom was 
Father Daly, who testified to the affectionate relations always exist- 
ing between the late Mr. Kilmorey and his son; also to the fact 
that Bryan had not been aware of his (Father Daly’s) intention of 
bringing Miss O’Kelly to Inisheen till after that intention had been 
carried out. 

Mike, the mountain lad, Marcella’s friend, gave evidence of the 
plot which, the defence asserted, had been laid by a murderous se- 
cret society to ruin the prisoner by bringing this charge against him. 
But Mike was not a clever youth, except in the matter of vigilance 
prompted by his affections, and the bullying cross-examination to 
which he was subjected terrified him into some blunders. The 
most striking point he made was when almost worried out of his 
wits he burst into tears and exclaimed, “ I’m tryin’ to tell you God’s 
truth, and ye will not let me.” When the last of Kilmorey’s wit- 
nesses had been examined and cross-examined, the counsel for the 
prosecution again took the matter into his hands. 

With a few thundering sentences like heavy blows he split the 
case for the defence from crown to heel, tore off what he called the 
false rags of sentiment in which villany had tried to hide itself, and 
placed the murderer Kilmorey before the jury in his genuine colors. 
He, counsel, believed that such a thin, miserable defence had never 
been set up before in any court of justice. He declared to his 
heavens that he was more disgusted at the sentimental side of the 
prisoner’s conduct than at its grosser brutality. This man had 
sought to shelter himself behind the tenderness of a woman — a 


CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE. 


137 


woman who, in spite of the regard with which the wretch had con 
trived to inspire her, had found herself obliged by truth to stand up 
and bear witness against him. He had trumped up a poor weak 
story, for which he had absolutely no support, of having been lured 
to the scene of the murder by an appeal to his charity through the 
wiles of a secret society — that society of which he was in reality one 
of the most active members. Would any man in his senses believe 
such a fabrication? If he had been warned of plots against him, 
why had he not kept some evidence of the fact? Where was the 
note which had summoned him, an innocent man, to that fatal spot? 
Would not any sane person have been on his guard against invita- 
tions of the kind, or, at least, have preserved the documents which 
conveyed them? Counsel did not wish to dwell too much on the 
connection with this case of the charming lady whom they had seen 
so painfully placed in the witness-box, and who was fortunately 
young enough to outlive the trouble into which she had been drawn 
by unfortunate circumstances, but he would ask the jury to con- 
sider whether the whole of this episode in the case did not tell in 
the strongest manner against the honesty of the prisoner’s character. 
Counsel did not wish to throw any doubt on the evidence of the 
Rev. Mr. Daly, but it was, to say the least, a strange coincidence 
which brought this girl, who was in possession of Kilmorey’s secret, 
hurriedly into Kilmorey’s home, kept her there under the strict 
guardianship of the prisoner and his mother, and resulted in the 
engagement of her affections by this person with a trial for murder 
hanging over his head, an engagement to marry between the man in 
such a terrible position and a beautiful girl and an heiress. As for 
her statement that she was induced to bear witness against him by 
his own representations, well, it was not until the story had leaked 
out, and it was practically impossible to withhold this evidence, that 
the prisoner had (according to the account of his friends) put on 
such an heroic attitude. The fact remained that the young lady 
had several times refused to tell the truth, and had expressed her 
determination to deny all knowledge of that part of the prisoner’s 
movements on the night of the 10th of January which could only 
be known to herself. The jury was open to the conviction that a 
change in the young lady’s own feeling, a return to right judgment 
after she had been removed from the influence of the prisoner, rath- 
er than the reason put forward by her with a woman’s loyalty, had 
procured for the prosecution that necessary link in th^ evidence 
which perfected the case against Kilmorey, as first set up by the 
confession of informers whose red-handed companion he had been. 
Counsel then proceeded to demolish the evidence of Mike of the 
mountain, whom he described as a blundering, misguided lad, who 
had been persuaded to give testimony of a plot which had never 
existed, through his dog-like attachment to the accused. Finally, 
he dwelt on the steady, unflinching evidence of the informers, who 
had every reason for telling the truth, having bought their own lives 
at its cost. In conclusion, counsel wound up with an eloquent de- 
nunciatory peroration which left a stinging reverberation in the ears 


138 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


of the listeners as of the sound of blows well placed and well de- 
served, hit home with a courage and vigor that put mere sentiment 
to shame, and wrought everlasting service to the cause of truth. 

After this Kilmorey’s counsel made a final muster of their thin 
forces, and rallied for a last attempt to secure the sympathy of the 
jury for the prisoner. All the old points were returned to and 
dwelt upon, and a strong appeal was made against the terrible cir- 
cumstantial evidence that unfortunately seemed to corroborate the 
lying story of perjured informers, wretches who are in this country 
too often encouraged to swear away an innocent man’s life in order 
to escape with their own. For the moment a reaction in favor of 
the prisoner was felt all through the court, and when counsel for 
the defence sat down there was a general feeling that the last words 
in the prisoner’s favor had been moving in the extreme, and that the 
verdict of the jury might yet probably go in his favor. 

Then the judge got up, the thin-faced judge whose sharp features 
had been sharpening noticeably all through the case, and as he took 
off his spectacles, and blinked a cruel gray glance round the court, 
the hopes of those whose sympathies were with the prisoner got a 
sudden chill. At the first cold measured words that fell from his 
lips the little warmth that had gathered round the defence was grad- 
ually frozen away, and his friends gave Kilmorey up as lost. The 
charge was, to use a common phrase, dead against the prisoner, and 
the fact that the other judge was seen to wipe his eyes surreptitious- 
ly seemed to add the last touch to the tragedy. 

Several ladies lowered their heads and began to weep, but Marcella 
sat dry-eyed and erect. We’ll pass over the terrible interval between 
the conclusion of the charge from the bench and the return of the 
jury from their deliberations. The verdict was “ Guilty .” 

For a moment Marcella’s eyes still clung to Kilmorey’s, and then 
there was a dull sound unnoticed in the excitement of the crowd, 
and the girl’s white face disappeared from its place in the dimly 
lighted corner where she had sheltered herself. 

Father Daly and old Bridget had a sorry drive home that evening, 
holding a crushed, inanimate burden between them, thankful that 
at least she had not heard the death-sentence pronounced, but trem- 
bling for the horrors of the hideous and inevitable to-morrow. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

DEATH AND LIFE. 

Darkness and horror hung over the house in Merrion Square 
where two stricken women lived through their first hours of hopeless 
and inconsolable anguish. The mother’s appalling shriek when she 
heard the fatal news was followed by a fit of violence which subsided 
after a time and left her mind unhinged and full of delusions. Hap- 
pily, her insanity involved entire forgetfulness of the misfortune 


DEATH AND LIFE. 


139 


which had overturned her reason. She believed that Bryan was 
travelling abroad for his pleasure. He had undertaken to make a 
voyage round the world, and could not be home for a year. 

“And I am so glad he is gone,” she would exclaim, “for I always 
had a dread that these Fenians might drag him into some kind of 
trouble.” 

“But the worst of it is,” she would whisper to Father Daly, “that 
I fear Marcella thinks he has forgotten her. She ought not to in- 
dulge such fancies; but you see she is looking shockingly ill.” 

Marcella’s suffering was of a different order. No shrieks came 
from her, and no merciful madness blotted out the terrible reality 
from her mind. With white lips and sunken eyes she tried to listen 
to Father Daly’s religious exhortations, but heard nothing. The roar 
of a sea that had no shore was in her ears; shipwreck lay all around 
her ; and a ghastly something to which her eyes as yet had given no 
shape loomed on her horizon. 

‘ ‘ Can you not cry a little, my child ?” said Father Daly, seeing 
that his words of attempted consolation did not reach her brain. 
The tears were rolling down his own wrinkled face. 

“There will be time enough to cry — afterwards,” she said; “I am 
going now to Bryan. He will be expecting me.” 

This was the day after the close of the trial, when she knew that 
his death, a horrible and disgraceful death, was soon to separate 
them. 

“My dear, I am afraid to let you see him yet. I have been with 
him this morning, and he is as brave as a lion. Remember, it is your 
part now to keep up his courage. I fear if you go to him like this 
you will break him down.” 

“ I think I am not going to break him down. The martyrs who 
were burned and crucified did not break each other down. God will 
help us, too.” 

Then he took her to the prison and left her alone with Kilmorey 
for an hour, keeping near the cell, so that he could be summoned if 
needed. But Marcella made no scene. She seemed to have no longer 
any feeling for her own suffering, physical or mental. Her whole 
soul appeared occupied with the necessity for being helpful to Kil- 
morey in his need. 

“I never seen a young creature suffer so brave and not die of it,” 
said the warder to the priest. “ Them that screams and faints get 
over it afterwards, but trouble like that drops down on a suddent 
when it can do no more.” 

Father Daly agreed, and acknowledged to himself that so to drop 
down might be the best thing Marcella could do after the final touch 
had been put to the tragedy. " Only he felt a grave doubt as to wheth- 
er her unnatural strength would keep up so long. 

It was some relief to him when, on returning home that evening, 
she fell into an agony of natural grief, moaning and weeping, and 
calling upon God to deliver her from insupportable torment. He 
and Bridget watched beside her all night, and he strove through the 
long terrible hours to save her reason from becoming wrecked by the 


140 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


paroxysms of frenzy which attacked her brain as each fresh image 
from the hideous future rose with ghastly reality before the eyes of 
her imagination. 

She not only knew, but had realized now, that Bryan had got to 
die a felon’s death. 

Her reiterated cry, “ Father Daly, is there a God — is there a God?” 
brought down the old man’s sympathetic tears plentifully. He 
could not bring himself to rebuke her for her unbelief, only kept 
saying, 

‘ ‘ There is a God, my dear, and he is good. The cross is his throne ; 
the crown of thorns was on his own head before he put it on yours.” 

He believed that the first despairing ravings of a broken heart are 
not heeded in heaven. Mercy waits patiently for the crushed spirit 
to right itself, for the soul burning in flames of anguish to rise out 
of the fury and delirium of the fiery furnace before it requires words 
of faith and resignation to come meekly from the tongue. 

Towards morning she became more calm, her natural thoughtful- 
ness for others returned, and she reproached herself for robbing the 
kind old man of his rest. 

A little later she was taken possession of by a frantic hope which 
kept her in a fever of expectation for days. 

“ It is quite impossible that it could happen,” she said. “ Some- 
thing will come to prove the truth. I will go to the Lord-lieutenant 
myself and tell him so. I will ask him to wait and to consider. When 
he thinks over the matter he will see what I mean. It is utterly im- 
possible that in a Christian country such a horror should be per- 
mitted — ” 

Father Daly assisted her to carry out this intention, and accom- 
panied her to the Castle, and stood by her during the short interview 
granted her with viceroyalty. His excellency explained to her that, 
unfortunately, her interference was useless. The case had been fully 
established, and in a matter of this kind it was impossible to take 
the life of one criminal and spare that of another. The fact that the 
convict was a gentleman only aggravated his crime. The terrible 
words were gently if coldly spoken, and Marcella had only herself to 
blame for the extra suffering heaped on her by this incident. 

After that she went down again into the abyss where there is no 
God and no hope, only the howling temptations that set upon an im- 
mortal soul given up to despair. And again Father Daly watched 
and waited for her return, praying for her who could not pray for 
herself; and at last he was rewarded by seeing her rise once more 
into the light of heaven and look at him with sane and seeing eyes. 

Then, with an astonishing rally of all her powers, she would be- 
have herself during her visit to Bryan with a courage which amazed 
both the priest and the condemned man. And so the fearful hours 
went past, like a slow lifetime of torture, and. the day for the final 
separation began to draw near. 

As for Kilmorey himself, he was, as Father Daly had said, brave 
as a lion, looking his terrible and disgraceful end in the face with 
the calmness of a true soldier who is losing his life in the thick of 


DEATH AND LIFE. 


141 


the fight. Somebody must die when there is a cause to be wou, and 
it is not always where glory has been earned that it is given. A 
scaffold will do as well as a battle-field for the passing of a martyr. 
He had made mistakes in his time, and let this expiate them, seeing 
that death was not the wages of mistake, nor of any wrong-doing, 
but had followed directly in the wake of his daring resolution to do 



His deepest trouble was for Marcella. God had comforted his 
mother with a merciful oblivion, and she would perhaps never, while 
she lived, know of the fate of her son. But it was for the young 
and passionate soul, strong to suffer, and valiant in its desire to fight 
his fight with him to the end, for whom there was no oblivion, nothing 
but wakeful wide-eyed anguish in store, that the heart of his man- 
hood was wrung almost to the destruction of his courage. The sight 
of her bleached mouth, and eyes withering away in her head with 
sorrow, was more than he could bear. He wished that Father Daly 
would take her at once to some other country where she might re- 
main till after the end — where she could not realize the last scenes 
because of distance, and of unusual surroundings. 

Father Daly shook his head when the suggestion was made to him. 

“You do not know her yet,” he said. “Where she is she will 
stay — that is, if her body and soul keep long enough together. I’m 
not at alUsure, however, that she will not be in heaven before you — 
will not be the first to welcome you when you get there.” 

It wanted now but two days of the end, and Marcella was on her 
knees at Father Daly’s knee, pouring out her heart to him as a child 
to its mother. 

“ I have given it all up, father, and I will not struggle with God 
any more ; I will not make things harder for him. I will smile at 
him in the last moment if you will only listen now to what I am go- 
ing to say to you. And if it seems to you very strange and impos- 
sible you will forgive me, for perhaps I am a little mad — a horror 
like this might make any one mad, Father Daly; only I will try to 
keep my wits till all is over. I could not live through my life after- 
wards if I thought I had missed a word or a look of his that I might 
have had with me to keep.” 

Father Daly put his hand on her bent head, and prayed over her 
silently, as her voice stopped, and her whole frame quivered and 
rocked with anguish. 

“I am not crying,” she said, presently, having mastered her agony 
for another effort to speak, “for I promised to look cheerful the 
next time I see him. I promised to smile at him now every time 
until the last, and I must not have my eyes all black and red with 
weeping when I go to him. What I want to say to you is this: it 
is always coming to me that if— I may not after all be able to die, as 
I hope and pray I may, to-morrow or next week ; I may even have 
to live years ; and if I had had his name for my own to go through 
the world with, I could have been braver. I could claim him as my 
own in heaven — ” 


142 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“My dear, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage 
there. ” 

“ I know that, Father Daly, but I would like that the very angels 
should know that he belonged to me. ” 

“ My child, do you mean that you would marry him now?” 

“Oh, Father Daly, if it might be! If you would join our hands 
and give us your blessing, so that I might carry the name they have 
blasted through my life, and might care for his mother and his 
people, who would then be mine.” 

Father Daly was startled and shocked. A marriage in a convict’s 
prison, on the very verge of a grave, seemed to him too awful to be 
thought of; and yet to this ghost-like girl, with her hollow eyes and 
pleading wail, it seemed the only one thing in the universe to give 
her a little comfort — a little courage to endure what was to come. 
To bear his name in the face of the world that had condemned him, 
to be able to speak of him here below as her own, and to claim him 
among the angels above, to have the right to take a daughter’s place 
beside his afflicted- mother, and the place of a mother to the people 
whom he had loved and was leaving forlorn — those were the only 
boons that were within the limits of possibility for her. How could 
any one refuse to think the matter out for her? 

He raised her from her knees and told her to take a little rest — 
idle words, as he knew while he was speaking them— and,lie would 
reflect on what she had said, and consider whether anything could 
be done. 

When the piteous request was conveyed by the priest to the con- 
demned man in his cell, Kilmorey’s courage broke down for the 
first time, and those strange, rare things, the tears of a brave man, 
dropped on Father Daly’s hands, which had closed upon his own. 

“I am not worthy of such love,” he said. “ If I might have lived 
I would have tried to be worthy of it. But how can I be so cruel 
as to allow her so to destroy herself? She is young enough to make 
new ties. She will not forget; but her sorrow will wear itself out 
in time, and a happy fate may still be in store for her. As things 
stand now, her connection with me will soon be forgiven and forgot- 
ten ; but marked out by my name — ” 

“I thought like you at first,” said Father Daly, “but I have 
changed my mind. That creature has no future before her except 
what is bound up with you. You have brought her, my poor lad, 
under God’s providence, a great deal of sorrow ; give her the only 
scrap of comfort it is in your power to bestow on her. A heart like 
hers is beyond all our measurements. Only the God that makes it 
knows what can satisfy it, or give it rest.” 

And so it was arranged; and in the felon’s cell, with Bridget and 
the warder for witnesses, Father Daly made Marcella and Kilmorey 
man and wife. 

“ Till death do us part ” Very awful did those impressive words 
of the service sound when only twenty-four hours lay between the 
moment of speaking and the coming of the destroyer whose right 
to part bridegroom and bride no one dared to question. “ Wliat 


DEATH AND LIFE. 


143 


God hath joined together let no man put asunder .” Yet these two 
were to be- sundered by man, and how soon! 

That night, after the last stroke of the clock ending the prison 
visiting- hours had driven her away from her husband, Marcella 
Kilmorey was alone in her darkened and melancholy house, pros- 
trate on the floor, struggling to pray, imploring to be allowed to 
keep her senses to the last, and not, through madness or sickness, to 
desert her post while bis eyes could look on her and draw comfort 
from her smile. The hand on which he had placed the wedding- 
ring, with the old pearl ring he had given her that fatal night in the 
Liberties set above it as guard, was thrust into her breast and 
clinched there, as she called on Heaven to help her in the suffering 
of this hour. Through the whirlwind of her agony a faint and 
spectral joy hovered near her heart at the touch of that ring, which 
was like a living tie, holding her to him now, and drawing her tow- 
ards him hereafter. 

No matter how long she might have to live here without him, or 
how withered and wrinkled she might have become before the years 
released her to him, he would know her looking down out of heav- 
en by the gleaming of that ring. No matter how far she might have 
to wander even when released, seeking for him through the bound- 
less regions of the other world, she would, having all eternity to 
search for him, be able to make herself known at last through the 
shining of that mystic circlet. Has not gold, which neither crum- 
bles like flesh nor rusts like steel, a sort of immortality among moul- 
dering things; and would not the gleam of this cling to her, even 
there, somehow ? 

She started, alarmed at her wandering fancies, suspicious and 
watchful of her own sanity. Madness was waiting like a wolf to 
devour her, 'she thought— to snatch her from his sight even before 
death’s black curtain could descend to hide her from him. To keep 
that wolf at bay she claimed sanctuary within the fiery circle of the 
Redeemer’s ever-burning love on the Cross. By fire only could she 
be saved from the monster. She must hold herself sane and sound 
for a few hours longer, so that in the last moment she might be all- 
present, body and soul, brains and heart, to stand with him on the 
verge, and send her spirit forward with him. 

And here the ghastly reality of common facts loomed black and 
hideous from behind their spiritual veilings, and the form and shape of 
what she was soon to see, in its enormity of horror and iniquity, filled 
all her consciousness and stared straight in the eyes of her despair. 

A sudden cry arose in the street outside; and the wan creature, 
swaying in the darkness like an already broken reed lashed by 
storm, caught the sound with her fine ear, held her breath involun- 
tarily to listen, and then pressed her hands to her head that she 
might not take in the sound of which she guessed the meaning. 

It was the last call of the newspaper-sellers for that night, trying 
to earn the price of bed and supper out of the morbid curiosity of 
individuals eager to know the final arrangements for the event of 
the morrow morning at Kilmainham. 


144 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


Then Marcella’s weak body was seized with a long fit of shudder- 
ing, like the convulsion which sometimes comes before death, but 
which in this case was only the outward sign of the uttermost tort- 
ure which human nature can suffer through, and yet live. 

When it became known that day in Dublin that the heiress of 
Distresna had married the convict Kilmorey in prison, and on the 
very eve of the last scene of his tragedy, a curious thrill ran through 
all circles, and for the moment public feeling pierced that dead wall 
of separation which rises up at once between the criminal condemn- 
ed to death and the outer living world to which he belongs no more, 
and pitied the two suffering creatures who had joined hands un- 
dauntedly under the very eye of the King of Terrors. 

This romantic incident, as it was called by the world, roused again 
the wavering belief in Kilmorey’s innocence which had for long 
dragged out a kind of cowardly existence in some minds, and dis- 
posed them to question the conclusions of the jury who had decided 
on the guilt of the condemned. It was remarked that the girl who 
had wedded him on the very step of the scaffold must at least be 
thoroughly convinced of his innocence; for of course this strange 
act must have been done of her own wish. Nothing could be gain- 
ed to Kilmorey by a marriage with her now. 

But in opposition to the few persons who are powerfully attract- 
ed by the out-of-the-way and romantic incidents of real life there 
are always larger numbers who feel an unconquerable repulsion tow- 
ards all erratic departures from the well-beaten paths of convention- 
al behavior. There were not wanting many people who held that 
Marcella had played a forward and unseemly part all through this 
business, and that her thrusting herself into notice again at so ghast- 
ly a moment — a moment which all right-minded people would be 
glad to forget — showed her singularly wanting in decency, not to say 
savoir faire. She ought, once the convict’s cell had closed on her 
miserable lover, to have disappeared from public view and hidden 
her head in a kindly obscurity. In that case human sympathy 
might have sought for her and found her, after the memory of pain- 
ful events in her life had a little passed away. But now she had 
finally made a fiasco of her future. Nobody would marry the wid- 
ow of a murderer, or care to be associated in any way with a woman 
who had deliberately assumed an accursed name. 

It was thus that the strange wedding of the morning had brought 
forcibly to minds that wanted to forget it the date of the death of 
the convict Kilmorey, and on that night when Marcella closed her 
ears to the cries of the newspaper boys and writhed alone in her de- 
spair, the subject of the event of the next morning was discussed by 
many lips. A ball was going forward at the opposite side of the 
square; and in the pauses of the waltz the startling romance was 
mentioned and then forgotten again as the music stilled tongues and 
stirred feet — music which wafted through open windows over the 
trees in the square crossed Marcella’s agonized consciousness with 
an occasional blare of sweet sounds : echoes from the St. Patrick’s 
Hall, as it seemed, where Kilmorey had smiled delightedly at her 


DEATH A^D LIFE. 


145 


without recognizing her, where she had first learned his name, and 
been permitted to stand beside him on an equality of position. 

With those gales of melody came before her eyes the glowing of 
flowers, and to her nostrils the odorous breath of them on the air; 
and her hero’s grave yet smiling face once more ascended out of the 
crowd on the staircase, and bent towards her with an expression of 
warm pleasure and startled interest. 

If anything can add one more touch to the hideousness of hope- 
less calamity, it is the flashing remembrance of former unexpected 
joy, with its deceitful surprises and unasked-f or promises. A new 
blast from the fiery furnace scorched this creature’s soul as the mu- 
sic swept through her, and made as if to thrust her out into the howl- 
ing wilderness of insanity from which, with open-eyed resolution, 
she was struggling to withhold herself. 

A couple of waltzers stepped out on the balcony in front of the fes- 
tive house: Miss Eyre, the soft-eyed girl who had sympathized with 
the sufferers in the Kilmorey affair from the first, and Mr. Shine, 
the young barrister, who, being one of the counsel for the prosecu- 
tion, had fallen in love with his present companion because she had 
instinctively taken the side of the defence. 

“I will not dance any more,” said the girl, petulantly, “ I cannot 
get it out of my head. No one ought to have given a ball to-night. 
I hate myself for being here. Oh heavens, here are the newspaper 
men coming screaming round the square. Think of that poor creat- 
ure listening to them over there across the trees!” 

“By Jove, I believe they are calling something hew,” exclaimed 
Mr. Shine, suddenly interrupting himself in his task of consoling 
his gentle partner with such philosophic platitudes as a good-hearted 
man could bring to mind on such an occasion. “Just wait here 
quietly for a few moments while I go and find out what they arc 
making such a rout about. If it is one of their usual falsehoods, I 
will have them up in court for it.” 

He returned presently, and took possession again of his seat in 
the balcony. 

“ They have been telling the truth for once,” he said — “Kilmorey 
is reprieved. Don’t look so white, or I shall have to leave you again 
to fetch you some water or wine.” 

“Don’t, please, don’t. Tell me the particulars.” 

“I don’t know that it’s much to be rejoiced over, even by those 
most concerned. The sentence is commuted to penal servitude for 
life.” 

“But the reason?” 

“ It seems that one of the informers died suddenly this afternoon, 
and made some kind of wild statement before he expired. N.> dep- 
ositions were taken, as there was not time; but two or three witness- 
es have sworn that he exclaimed urgently that Kilmorey was inno- 
cent.” 

“ But in that case ought not Kilmorey to be set free altogether?” 

“ There is the other informer, who had the longest and the strong- 
est tale to tell, and there is the powerful corroborative evidence. I 

JO 


146 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


don’t believe myself that Kilmorey did it, but, all things considered, 
he was bound to be condemned. I am surprised that even this 
occurrence has made any difference at headquarters. It is out of 
the usual course of procedure under the present stern regime .” 

At the same moment Father Daly was knocking at the door of 
Marcella’s gloomy mansion. He had left her only for a short time, 
with the promise to return at midnight and watch with her for a 
few hours, waiting for the moment when they two might again be 
admitted to the prisoner’s cell, not to leave him again until after the 
final parting. The old man trembled with agitation as he waited 
impatiently for the opening of the door, and his face was wet with 
tears, of which he was perhaps unconscious, or forgot to dry away. 

Marcella, hearing the knock, which was to her ear as the tolling 
of a knell or the sound of stones falling on a coffin, gathered up her 
shuddering limbs from the floor where she lay, and made her way 
down the staircase to meet this faithful friend of her tribulation. 
At the foot of the last flight he was waiting for her, hearing her 
coming. 

“My dear,” he said, “where are you? I have turned almost 
blind. Give me your hand. Are you able to hear a little lightening 
of your cross, Marcella? Hush, child, there is a change for us. lie 
dods not die. There is a reprieve — ” 

At the first hint of what was coming the shattered creature, staring 
at him with dry fixed eyes, fell forward into his fatherly arms; at 
the last words she slipped from them again without a sound, and 
lay, as if stone dead, across his feet. 


CHAPTER XXIY. 

SEPARATION. 

The remainder of that night was spent by Father Daly in drag- 
ging her through an unexpected danger, in tiding her over a new 
crisis — the sudden return of joy into veins from which it had been 
with long and slow purgation torturingly expelled. He tried to 
moderate her wild transports of delight, reminding her that this un- 
looked-for boon did not mean freedom and happiness. 

“ But it is life — life ! The sun will shine on his living face at noon 
to-day. His eyes will open to-morrow morning, and the next, and 
the next! His heart will be beating still this day week — this day 
year. Oh, Father Daly, with life, what possibilities! I cannot see 
any further than just this yet. Now, I will not die, neither. I must 
not die. Oh, Father Daly, do not let me die. I am like a poor 
starved creature, am I not — bound to drop into the grave in a 
month? That is what I was hoping for, praying for; but now it is 
different, different. Oh, I must not die, I will not die. Give me 
food to eat; anything to make me live and be strong; for I have 


SEPARATION. 


147 


a great deal to do, Father Daly. I cannot remember what it is now ; 
but I know I have a great deal before me to do.” 

For many hours this rapture in the mere possession of his life 
lasted. Her face altered again with wonderful quickness; the 
pinched, darkened features took their natural curves and color; her 
eyes lost their fevered lustre, and grew soft and luminous with hap- 
piness. On her way to the convict’s cell she was bright, cheerful, , 
almost gay. She could not remember that a separation almost as 
cruel as death, and in some ways more unendurable, was hanging 
over their heads, whom Death had unexpectedly failed to part at 
once and forever. 

Kilmorey himself had realized more readily the questionable nat- 
ure of the boon that had been granted to him,- He knew something 
of the horrors of a convict’s life, and it taxed all his courage to meet 
it with fortitude. To see the face of his young wife smiling at him, 
to think of his peaceful home upon the lake, to remember his plans 
and hopes for his people, and know that these must be lost and for- 
. gotten, shut out for the long span of an intolerable lifetime behind 
prison walls by years and miles of time and distance— all this stag- 
gered the spirit within him, and made his heart quail when, in his 
solitude, he stood up and confronted the truth. 

Would it not have been easier to die? 

His death would at least have set her free, given her the chance, 
if not the certainty, of beginning a new life, even if many years 
hence, even if in a new country, and under such new conditions as 
she could not foresee. No such possibility was now before her. 
Chained by a chain that could not be broken to one who could have 
no part in her life, she would be like a living body bound to a corpse. 
No freedom, no gradually dawning peace and joy would ever belong 
to her until time and labor, having worn out the resisting strength 
of his manhood, might crush him at last into a felon’s grave. 

It seemed to him now that he had been cruelly wrong in marry- 
ing her, criminally weak in yielding to her pathetic prayer to be al- 
lowed to belong more absolutely to his memory, and to have a right 
to him recognized by the angels of heaven. Good God among 
what herds of demons must her right in him now be claimed ! What 
a horror she had taken into her young life! Overwhelmed by these 
thoughts, Kilmorey looked back almost with regret on the calm cour- 
age with which he had stood erect yesterday, looking at a scaffold/ 

But when the door of his cell opened, and he saw her face radiant 
with joy shining before him, he forgot everything, except that it 
was sweet to be still in the same world with her. As his wife wept 
in his arms, he felt that somehow or somewhere there must b£ a 
future, in store for them. 

“ Do not reproach me for looking gay,” she said ; “do not ask me 
to grieve any more. Not now ; I cannot think of anything but that 
you are here, instead of gone where I could not follow you. There 
may be a terrible time coming; I cannot see it yet. I will not see 
it, Bryan. Let me rest a little from suffering; just looking at you, 
listening to you.” 


148 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“Dearest, I am so selfish, I can think of nothing but that I love 
you, and that God has left me life.” 

‘ ‘ Left us life— I should soon have followed you. But my fear was 
that I should not die for a long time. And yet how could I have 
thought of deserting your mother? And I have good news for her. 
The doctor thinks that she may recover.” 

“ Thank Heaven if there is hope for her.” 

“I will take such perfect care of her until — you come back to 
us.” 

“My darling, you must not think of that; there will be no com- 
ing back. But you may come to see me— sometimes.” 

“No coming back? You coward! Can this be the man who 
was so ready for death, and who would not quail an inch ? Have 
you no hope in you, after all that has happened? - If you have not, 
no matter. I have got enough for two.” 

“It was easier to die, and leave you a widow, than to leave you 
a wife and yet no wife. Oh, this cruel ring which is to bind you 
to that which is no better than a corpse, a living man behind a pris- 
on wall; this wicked ring, which is to rob your youth of every hope 
— a sign that you are linked forever with a convict. Would to God 
I had not been so weak as to be persuaded to put it on your finger.” 

“ Ah, now indeed you are cruel. So you only pretended to love 
me; you are sorry you are bound to me; you wedded me hoping to 
escape from me? Then, sir, you might have kept your repentance 
a secret from me. It would have been kinder not to rob me of my 
foolish joy — ” 

“My love, your courage under this wrong I have done you is 
breaking my heart.” 

“Then I must express it badly, or wrap it up in some repulsive 
disguise ; for if I could make you feel it as I feel it, your heart 
would be the gladder for it. You would be thankful that I have 
the comfort of this ring, the support it will give me, the authority 
it will bestow on me, even the power it will confer on me to take 
care of your people for you— until you come— until you come.” 

“I will hope to please you, I will believe anything you bid me. 
My people will have a trusty steward over them, my poor mother 
will have a faithful daughter by her side, But my darling, who 
ought to have a husband to take care of her — ” 

‘ ‘ Has got one, thank you, and one who is quite to her taste, though 
you do not appear to think much of him.” 

“ He would have been a loving and tender one, he would have 
shielded her from every hurt. I think he would have been able to 
make her happiness, if evil had not befallen him. As it is, he is 
only a millstone round her neck, a cross laid on her shoulders — ” 

‘ ‘ A great joy in her heart, a crown on her head, a glory round 
her life— how far shall we go on with it?” laughed Marcella, inter- 
rupting him. “Oh, my dear, you do not. know me yet, but you 
must try and believe in what you are to me. I tell you while you 
are still in the world I cannot altogether mourn. I am too full of 
the future which God must be getting ready for you. Why has he 


SEPARATION. 


149 


spared your life now except for that future? While you are away 
I shall live in it, and for it, and you will be happy too, knowing 
that you are suffering like the souls in Purgatory, only kept away 
for a time from the beautiful life that is waiting for you. It will be 
such a lovely life, won’t it, when we are together taking care of the 
people at Inisheen? It will come soon, Bryan— it must come soon. 
I will weary the heavens with my prayers till the truth comes to 
light. And then the whole world will acknowledge my martyr 
whom I have been glorifying.” 

He allowed her to rave on in the fever of joy which the reaction 
from the chills of death had brought upon her, and tried to hide his 
own anguish, which was in its sober senses and wide-awake to the 
reality of the parting that was at hand. He knew that soon enough 
the sense of hopeless catastrophe would descend upon her once 
more, and said to himself that he must store up his own strength 
for the moment when hers should fail. He put aside the haunting 
thought that he was leaving her alone in the world, cut off from all 
human sympathy by the curse of bearing a convict’s name, and tried 
to believe, or to pretend to believe for the hour, in the impossible 
future which she insisted on creating for him. He knew very well 
that a convict who has narrowly escaped death has not much far- 
ther boon to hope for from justice, and he felt that he could better 
bear to wear out his life in a prison cell than accept freedom, unless 
his innocence were fully established. All the unlikelihoods which 
Marcella would not see were arrayed before his eyes in their uncom- 
promising actuality ; and yet he smiled with her, talking lover’s 
talk, the sweetness of which sometimes beguiled him into forgetting 
wholly the terrible loneliness of the waking which lay beyond the 
full living and loving of this short-lived dream. 

During the small space which lay between the date of the com- 
mutation of his sentence and the departure of the convict for 
Portland prison she was with him all the time that prison rules 
would permit; sometimes accompanied by Father Daly, sometimes 
by Bridget' travelling back and forward through winter rain and 
fog from the melancholy house in Merrion Square, where his moth- 
er sat reading imaginary letters from him all day long, and talking 
about his travels, and congratulating herself continually that he was 
safe at the other side of the world, away from the Fenians. When 
she was not with him Marcella was waiting on Mrs. Kilmorey, talk- 
ing to her cheerfully about Bryan’s return — that return towards 
which her own heart was now set in hope with all the force which 
her nature could muster — or praying in the old church where she 
had first begun to pray for him. As the hour for parting drew 
near, there were no signs about her of the setting in of that de- 
spair which Bryan had feared to see, and he watched her with sur- 
prise as her manner became more tranquil, and her strength seemed 
to strengthen, instead of vanishing before the anguish of parting 
like a phantom in the light of day. He did not know’ with what 
passion of earnestness she had prayed for that strength, with what 
fervor she had asked for supernatural help to brace up her courage 


150 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


for the separation. She would not weaken him in his crudest mo- 
ment by her complaints, nor send him away overwhelmed by the 
thought that he had left behind him a woman with a wretched life, 
whose moans and tears must haunt him in his prison cell, and op- 
press him more terribly than the wreck of his own future, the loss 
of his liberty, or the unmerited condemnation of his fellow-men. 
Come what might afterwards, she would send him away with the 
warmth of hope in his heart, with a little spot of blue break- 
ing, though ever so far away, through the black clouds on his 
horizon. 

It was early day yet in both of their lives, and how many times 
might not the weather change before night? 

Till the very hour of the convict’s departure for Portland she 
kept her spirits wound up to this exalted pitch It was arranged 
that she and Father Daly should travel to England on the same day, 
and remain for some little time as near the prison as possible, seeing 
him as often as was admissible The farewells were thus deferred, 
and the idea of separation disguised and kept aloof 

Fortunately she was not allowed to see him prepared for depart- 
ure, the iron fetters fastened upon ankle and wrist by chains that 
clanked as he walked to the black conveyance waiting for him out- 
side the prison door. As he glanced for one moment at the green 
distances around Kilmainham, the felon Kilmorey thought that 
even a prison in Ireland might be sweeter than a prison elsewhere, 
and asked himself should he ever look on an Irish field again. One 
more glimpse of Ireland, the bay, the Wicklow mountains struggling 
through mist, and he was buried in the convict-ship, hurrying away 
from country, wife, mother, home, people, alike from the happy 
past and the future that was to have been so bright. 

As soon as they were permitted to visit him, Marcella and Father 
Daly found him in his cell at Portland, a grim stone chamber with 
a small window, his surroundings a wooden bench for a bed, a small 
table, and a pitcher of water. He was dressed in prison dress, but 
he had not as yet settled down thoroughly in this narrow stony 
space within which he was to wear out all the years of his manhood 
He kept walking about the few yards of flagged floor like one who 
had been detained there by accident and was impatient to get out, 
the place looking just such as a man might, by chance, spend a bad 
quarter of an hour alone in, and which he would remember uncom- 
fortably for the rest of his life. It was absolutely impossible to im- 
agine Kilmorey, as he stood, his eye full of fire and energy, his frame 
vigorous and young, snared in this trap, caged in this hole till death 
should set him free. Marcella could not believe that such was his 
fate, though a sob caught her breath when she saw him standing 
there solitary in his felon’s clothes, already barred out from the 
world of action and defrauded of the light of the sun. 

Still, she would not allow herself to break down. She had brought 
him books, writing-materials, flowers, though it was winter, without 
asking how much of the comfort of these he would be permitted to 


SEPARATION. 


151 


enjoy. During the short visit she persisted in speaking as if his 
stay here must only be for a week, a fortnight, at most a month. 
“You can bear it for that little time, Bryan Soldiers have often 
to endure as much. And how you will enjoy the comforts of home 
afterwards! And what a welcome the people will give you! What 
visits I shall have to pay them all when I go back, telling them how 
you look, and all about it!” 

Bryan, who nursed no delusions, never contradicted her, spoke no 
word to undeceive her, tried to look as if he shared her hopes and 
expectations ; but it taxed all his strength to restrain his own grief, 
to conceal that wide-awake despair which possessed him as the mo- 
ment for the final separation drew near and arrived. Father Daly 
bade him good by first, and waited outside for Marcella. 

Kilmorey held her in his arms, and at last the half-delirious words 
of hope froze on the young wife’s lips. She seemed to waken sud- 
denly out of a trance. Like one who has been dreaming sweetly of 
home and sunshine, and is shaken up to confront howling hurricane 
and shipwreck, she looked wildly round the pitiless stone barriers 
and clung to his neck. In that moment she was terribly assured 
that their hands were severed, that she was leaving him there for 
life. But there was no more time for speech, not an instant to undo 
the work she had struggled so hard to accomplish. The madness 
in her soul could find no expression before he himself had put her 
from him outside the door of his cell, and the bolts had grated and 
clanged behind her. 

Then Father Daly felt that the only way to save her reason was 
to get her home at once; home to the wide moors and the rolling 
waves, and all the soothing sights and sounds of nature which, be- 
ing associated with happier days, might win her round to hope 
again after the present crisis should have passed. 

She followed him meekly and passively, but with such a look of 
silent despair in her face as made people turn to look at her where 
she sat in the corner of a railway-carriage or steamer, staring blank- 
ly before her, and seeing nothing but rigid stone walls built up be- 
tween her and the face of the heavens. When the journey was at 
last at an end, and Crane’s Castle reached, she was carried up to her 
room and laid on her bed, the blinds were drawn, and the servants 
stepped about softly. Surely this was a dreary house, on the verge 
of the thundering Atlantic, under the shadow of the hills; in one 
room a woman whose wits were gone with sorrow; in another, this 
crushed creature huddled on the bed, unable to turn her face to the 
light of day. 

The little home at Inisheen had been shut up, and Mrs. Kilmorey 
and her attendant had been removed to Crane’s Castle. Miss O’Don- 
ovan remained with her friends in Dublin, feeling unequal to the 
melancholy task of looking after so sad a household as that at Dis- 
tresna. Faithful Bridget managed as best she could, hoping for the 
moment when the young mistress would open her eyes again on the 
daily world, and lift the terrible cloud a bit that hung over the som- 
bre dwelling. Father Daly came and went, his hair somewhat 


152 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


whiter, and the wrinkles in bis pathetic old face deeper than on the 
day when we first made acquaintance with him. 

And every day the people from their cabins among the bogs and 
mountains besieged the Castle for news of Mr. Bryan and of their 
darling lady. They had a vivid understanding of the tragedy that 
had been lived, and was yet to be lived through. Their prayers and 
their ululus rose evening and morning in lonely places, and filled the 
wide air, seldom disturbed by other noise than the roaring of the 
waves and the cries of sea-birds. Bare feet were forever on the 
tracks leading to and from homes and burrowing places undiscover- 
able by all save those who knew the way. Marcella and Kilmorey 
had cared to know those ways, and had left the high-roads of the 
world to find them out; and therefore they were worshipped now 
in their sorrow by barefooted pilgrims, who knew no other paths 
through life than these seamy zigzags that led along dreary flats and 
up to lonesome highlands. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

r THE convict’s wife. 

When Marcella’s fit of prostration gave way, and the vitality of 
youth lifted her up and set her on her feet again, she looked round 
in vain for the delusive hope that had carried her so far on her trav- 
el of pain. As one short dark winter’s day after another dawned and 
set, and life went on monotonously in the silent house, the hours 
going and coming with as little variety as the waves that rose and 
fell with dreary thunder under the garden wall, and leaving as little 
trace behind them, she realized gradually that this separation was for 
life. There were no forces in nature, strong and rich in resources 
though nature might be, great enough to overturn the barriers set 
up by man against man; no subtleties of the braiu of a loving wom- 
an sufficiently ingenious to reverse the decrees of a law-making uni- 
verse intent on securing itself against the encroachments of crime. 

Bryan, snatched from the very step of a scaffold, was yet con- 
demned to a kind of death. Shut in his tomb, bound by the cere- 
cloths of a living grave, swathed in the oblivion his friends had 
consigned him to, an oblivion that blotted his name from the roll 
of men who could be suffered to live, there was no gentle Saviour 
to take away the stone from his sepulchre and bid this buried Laz- 
arus arise and come forth. There he must remain, a living soul, 
immured in a vault till the years should shrivel his face, and extin- 
guish the light of his eyes, and dry up the sap in his veins. At each 
short visit paid him at long intervals she must expect to find him 
more worn, more weary, his mind more exhausted with the rebellion 
of the imprisoned body, or, if less impatient of his restraints then, 
also less strong to resist the slow blight gradually eating up his man- 
hood. 


THE CONVICT’S WIPE. 


153 


When she began to resume the duties of her household, as much 
for the sake of others as to occupy herself, the effort was at first 
utterly vain; the tasks w T ould drop out of her hands, the entire use- 
lessness and futility of everything stared her out of countenance, 
and her eyes would suddenly grow blind again to her actual sur- 
roundings, and fix themselves with a fascinated gaze on one point 
in a universe of wrecks and follies, the single dim ray from heaven 
penetrating a dungeon and lighting up a solitary figure built round 
with intolerable stone. 

Even long walks on the moors and rocks afforded her no relief, 
such weak yielding to an impulse to escape with her sorrow from 
all eyes bringing its own punishment. The result was too much 
time and space for that kind of thinking which attains to no solu- 
tion of anything, but acts like the welling away of life-blood, leav- 
ing a drained heart and a benumbed and bewildered intelligence. 

There was too much time and space everywhere for such a small 
weak creature as herself, and all visible things seemed at pains to 
enforce this idea upon her, and fix it permanently in her mind. 

The wide rolling Atlantic waves that came and went as if out of 
and into eternity, widening and lengthening with each fresh approach 
and retreat, the free wandering moors that stretched themselves out 
immeasurably under the rays of the wintry sun and made paths for 
their own travelling through the clouds to infinity, alike oppressed 
her with the invitingness and suggestiveness of their triumphant 
scope. While she walked swiftly she asked herself why she, and 
the land, and the water, and the clouds, and the fleet birds, and, above 
all, the wild breeze, had such limitless powers of going and coming, 
while the active feet of one who was always in her mind were cruel- 
ly tethered within a few square yards of masonry, restrained from 
even as much movement as the feeble and the aged and the maimed 
among living creatures may enjoy. 

At last the sickening hatred of the liberty of motion which he 
could not share grew to a sort of madness in her, and she forsook 
the moors and all out door life, and shut herself up with Mrs. Kil- 
morey in the room where the invalid chiefly lived, an apartment 
overlooking the sea to which the afflicted mother had taken a fancy. 

As yet, that poor lady had shown no sign of recovery from her 
mental disorder, but neither had her madness assumed any unhappy 
form. It was still her dream that Bryan had escaped away from Ire- 
land at a fortunate moment, and was enjoying to the utmost his trav- 
el round the world. Sometimes she fretted a little because he did 
not write word that he was coming home, but soon forgot this only 
cause for dissatisfaction. Formerly, Marcella had fled scared from 
before her smiling face, and the task of inventing pleasant answers 
to her ceaseless remarks and questions; but now that the girl’s own 
heart-sickness had taken a new turn, and she found a relief in chain- 
ing her young limbs within limits as narrow as those that constrain- 
ed the prisoner whose life in bonds she was trying to follow, she 
made fresh efforts to amuse the poor woman and to humor her hap- 
py imaginations 


154 


MARCELLA GRACE, 


Letting her mind go with the stream of her companion’s delirium, 
she would pretend for a moment that the mother’s delusion was re- 
ality, and reality only a nightmare, and would talk about Bryan’s 
travels and Bryan’s enjoyment— would even read fragments from 
Bryan’s letters, to which she added passages of her own invention, 
such as he might have written during an absence under happier cir- 
cumstances. 

She would divert herself and her listener with descriptions of 
scenery supplied by her own imagination, and with sketches of im- 
aginary people he had met. When the mother talked of his home- 
coming, which she said was to be expected soon, Marcella humored 
the fancy, and, with what she felt to be a half-crazy glee, spoke of 
the preparations that must be made for him at Inislieen, the pleasure 
lie would find in seeing certain improvements which he had wished 
to be made, and of the jubilee that would be held among the people 
to welcome him. 

But when the pathetic play was played out, and the invalid, 
soothed and charmed, had relapsed into her cushions to sleep a little, 
Marcella had then to pay too dearly for the riot of her fancy by the 
anguish of the reaction from imaginary happiness to intolerable woe. 

With her head buried in the foot of the mother’s couch, she would 
kneel with covered face, taking blow after blow as it fell on her 
heart, afflicting her whole body with physical pain, and then, having- 
borne the shock, she would pass a silent, motionless hour, seeing 
with her closed eyes into the prison cell, watching Bryan as he paced 
about his few yards of pavement, trying to look over his shoulder 
on the page he was reading, scanning the pallor and the lines of his 
face, striving to speak to him without words, to make her presence 
known without touch or sound. 

In the evening she would recover a little; would sing Mrs. Kilmo- 
rey her favorite songs, and help her with her needle-work, and read 
and talk, and feel a certain satisfaction in the thought that she had 
passed her day within limits almost as narrow as Kilmorey’s own. 

This unnatural way of living could not go on very long without 
leaving a trace upon her appearance; and when Father Daly came 
in one day he was startled by the look in her face. 

“ I am tired of walking out alone. Father Daly,” she said. “I am 
trying to realize what it is to live within four close wall?.” 

“I see,” he answered. “ You are anxious to take away Bryan’s 
last comfort; when the time for your next visit comes round you 
will not be able to go to him.” 

“ Oh, Father Daly, I am not ill. You don’t think I am looking 
ill?” 

“Put on your bonnet and come with me at once for a walk.” 

She went obediently, her heart throbbing with a new fear. What 
if she were to be physically incapacitated by mental or bodily ill- 
ness from paying him those rare visits which even the rigors of the 
prison law allowed! She owned her mistake to her friend, but 
pleaded her terror of that melancholy which the widths and lengths 
of air, water, and earth everywhere enforced upon her. 


tiie convict’s wife. 


155 


“ Well, now, I have something to propose to you,” said the priest. 
“My little school-mistress over in Bally down valley is not very well, 
and a holiday for change of air would be a blessing to her. I have 
thought that if you would take her place for a few weeks two peo- 
ple might be benefited.” 

Marcella hesitated. Grief has its feverishly active phases and its 
indolent phases. Kilmorey’s wife felt herself at that moment inert 
and helpless. 

“Of course, if you cannot think of it, I must try and incur the ex- 
pense of a paid substitute for her, or, failing that, let the poor child 
take her chance of falling into confirmed bad health.” 

“ No, no, ” said Marcella. ‘ ‘ I will do it. ” 

“I knew you would,” said Father Daly, triumphantly. “You 
will find it irksome at first; but what you want is to be forced into 
something that will give you a little trouble quite outside of your 
own affairs. To be obliged to drive three or four miles in the winter 
mornings will be annoying, but invigorating ; and the effort to keep 
about fifty brats in order for some hours will rouse you a bit, I can 
tell you. And besides, my dear, it will be a step towards closer in- 
tercourse between you and your people— and his — whom you have 
been rather neglecting, haven’t you?” 

“ Yes. They have all got away from me into the distance. And 
when they do come near they seem like ghosts. Only one person is 
real to me in the world.” 

“And that one person you must forget for a while. I’ll engage 
you won’t get time to think of him during school hours. After I 
have seen how this works I shall have another little plan to propose 
to you; but one thing at a time.” 

At first her new task was distasteful to her. That very fact that 
she could not get leave to think of him for so many hours was a 
grievance. The noisy children were like a hive of bees let loose, 
that swarmed round her head and shut out her view of the sun. 
But by-and-by she had gained a sort of charmed sway over her tor- 
menters which surprised and pleased her, and she began to individ- 
ualize the thin, large-eyed faces with their various expressions; to 
notice that Mary’s lips were redder than Nannie’s, and Nora’s bare 
feet were smaller and finer than the rest that hung from the benches, 
and that plain-featured little Bridget always gave her a loving glance 
which, more than any other, went warm to her heart. 

The welcome of the scholars grew to be a distinctly good thing in 
her day when, on going into the school-house, she found half a doz- 
en young heads with wind-tossed locks bending together over the 
fire of turf, while one fanned the flame with her scant petticoat, and 
another pulled the logs this way and that way with her brown fin- 
gers to make them burn briskly, that “ Herself ” might be warmed 
after her drive. And when in the twilight of a wintry afternoon 
she was met coming out of the school-house door by a crude, shy 
deputation of fathers arrived to thank her for her devotion to their 
children, she felt an unaccustomed glow in her veins, and thought 
with pleasure that here was something worth telling to Bryan— 


156 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


something that would interest him and give him a moment’s de- 
light. 

In this writing to Bryan about it all she began to find her reward. 
The little world of the school-house, with its various characters and 
incidents, supplied her with many a long paragraph in her letters to 
the prison. The humorous scenes that occurred, the comical things 
that were said, found their way into the pages w T hich occupied her 
evening after evening; and when Bryan’s replies convinced her of 
the pleasure her pictures and anecdotes had given him, she looked 
about with eagerness for fresh varieties of every-day life with which 
to float a breath of fresh air into his solitude. 

As with each new attempt to put the life of her world, the little 
world he knew and loved so well, vividly before him, proved a suc- 
cess, she felt a latent power awake in her, and with an excitement 
that was almost joy went to work to exercise it for his amusement. 

Now she had something to walk out for; a motive in making daily 
visits to the school even after the young school mistress had return- 
ed with improved health to her post: a distinct reason for seeking 
out the people in their homes, hearing the tales they had to tell, and 
witnessing the homely scenes of their lives — scenes in which they 
gratefully made her a sharer. It was something to rise for in the 
morning, this search after life-like figures and scenery for her even- 
ing sketching in the journal which she now kept regularly for her 
husband. 

Bryan, also, at her request kept a kind of record for her of the de- 
tails of his prison life, all that could interest without too much afflict- 
ing her. Various characters of those with whom he had to associate 
were drawn for her with a power and skill which called forth her 
admiration. Sometimes, in reading his letters, her sorrow was al- 
most forgotten in her delight in the vigor and noble temper of his 
mind, the manliness with which he accepted his misfortune and 
made the best of his circumstances. There were no complaints, 
scarcely even a reference to inconvenience and privation. When he 
failed of subject-matter out of his present life, he went back into his 
past, and gave her, bit by bit, a sort of history of his own thoughts 
and experiences and aspirations from his earliest boyhood upward. 
Absorbed in this intercourse, Marcella wore through the winter 
months with tolerable calmness. Winter seemed suited to such a 
life, and lent itself easily to its requirements. The morning letter 
received, the short dark day spent abroad in the cold air, in the rough 
wind, among the poor and patient, then the evening fire and lamp, 
the howling storm and sea outside, and the scrape, scrape of the pen 
that was carrying her message, expressing the extravagant loving- 
nesses of her heart, shaping out the humorous or pathetic anecdote 
which was to make him laugh or thrill the next day, forgetful for a 
moment of his bonds. 

But when spring burst upon her, and the first lark began to sing, 
then again her life fell in ruins around her. How shape summer 
with all its glories into any kind of harmony with the tragedy of 
their two lives? 


THE CONVICT’S WIFE. 


157 


It was just when winter had breathed its last sigh, and that lark 
had found a patch of blue from which to hurl down his delirious 
rhapsody about liberty and joy upon Marcella’s heart, that a passage 
in a letter of Bryan’s smote her with a new and sharp anguish. 

“ I have learned,” he wrote, “that as I am looked upon as a well- 
conducted prisoner, I may hope to be liberated at the end of twenty 
years — always provided my good conduct continues. Here is some- 
thing to look forward to, my dearest love. If we both outlive the 
term we may yet be together.” 

This, with the first primrose at her foot and new rose-tints on the 
sea, was too much for the woman who in one winter seemed to her- 
self to have exhausted all the patience and endurance in her nature. 
Strange that the fixed term of twenty j^ears seemed to her more in- 
tolerable than the vagueness of a lifetime. The idea of the lifetime 
had been hard to grasp, and all sorts of shapeless possibilities were 
felt , to float through its measureless hours like unseen stars through 
space. But twenty years made a comprehensible period, sickeningly 
long, calculably ruinous in its workings, with a sharp, set limit that 
in its very assertion seemed to annihilate any shorter limitations 
which an extravagant imagination might conjure up. 

She asked herself what kind of creature she would have grown to 
be after the slow, sad passing of those twenty years? Would not the 
wife to whom he must come forth in that distant day be a woman 
with faded cheeks — eyes whose lustre was gone — a worn woman 
with youth long wept away, and no remnant left of the graces which 
ought to belong to the bride of such a man as Bryan Kilmorey? 
Oh, why had she, in that mad moment of their tragedy, stretched out 
her hand to take from him the liberty of even that far future, bound 
him to herself for time and eternity, shut him off from the possibility 
of choice in that new day which was still to dawn for him so far 
ahead, and which might, only for her, have possibly brought him 
new joys, a fresh beginning of life, happy hours unclouded by such 
memories and associations as must always hang round her? Ought 
not his wife to be found among the young glad girls of that future 
day? Oh, she would have tried not to be jealous of those girls, whose 
fresh faces would, in that far-off hour, put to shame her own grief- 
worn, tear-furrowed countenance. She would have withdrawn her- 
self, turned her face to the wall, and left him to find his happiness in 
forgetting her. 

Then it occurred to her, with a strange thrill of mingled relief and 
anguish, that the Bryan of that day would not be one whom glad 
girls would be likely to smile upon. He would appear not as a man 
freed from unjust imprisonment with a stainless name; he would be 
a convict, the brand of murderer would lie upon him, the long expi- 
ation of his supposed crime would arouse no pity, no sympathy 
among his fellow - creatures; the young, the gay, the glad would 
shrink from him in horror. Even if disease had not fastened upon 
him, and he did not come forth stricken, crippled, and prematurely 
aged, yet there would be no one to welcome him back into the sun- 
shine besides herself; no one but the faded wife to give him her 


158 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


faithful hand and lead him away to some happy solitude of nature, 
where the mountains and trees would not gossip over his misfort- 
unes, and the winds would not execrate his name. 

There was comfort even in this melancholy thought ; and the cer- 
tainty that the very misfortune which turned, and must always turn, 
the world away from him, made him more entirely her own, filled 
her with an eager joy. 

Having got over this point in her outlook to the future, she began 
to realize a little more hopefully that there would, after all, be a fut- 
ure, however far away it might now seem. 

And then she began to gather up a few crumbs of comfort and 
confidence in herself. Perhaps, even if she should have grown old 
and unlovely, he would still see her the same because of the undying 
love in her heart. But in the mean time she must not weep all the 
light out of her eyes ; time would be busy enough trying to quench 
it. From this point of view, even if from no other, despair was her 
deadliest enemy. By a constant habit of patience, and the encour- 
agement of sweet thoughts, she would baffle the attacks of this foe 
alike of her present and her future. She would parry its thrusts 
and escape its disfiguring scars. 

With rare visits to the prison, and long weeks spent as close to it as 
possible, during which they had the sorry comfort of feeling that she 
was at least near him, and with a trip to a little frequented part of 
Switzerland, made for the purpose of getting some variety to put 
into her letters to him, she got through the dreaded summer. Win- 
ter brought her back to her old ways at Crane’s Castle, and she add- 
ed some daily hours of study to her former pursuits. And then with 
the opening up of a new spring came changes. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 
mike’s end. 

During that winter Father Daly had made trial of his second plan 
for Marcella’s relief, which was the study of the Irish language ; and 
thereby he hung a long tale of the helpfulness towards herself and 
others which she was to develop out of the acquirement of her na- 
tive tongue. Having mastered the language herself, she was to 
instruct the children of the school, who already spoke it, in the 
mysteries of reading and writing it. 

He was to be her tutor, and the good old man was glad of this ex- 
cuse to spend two or three evenings of every week in that melan- 
choly house by the sea, in the company of two afflicted women who 
were forsaken by all the world but himself. 

He was not a very practical tutor, as the lessons were constantly 
interrupted by his announcements of various scraps of news which 
he had picked up and treasured for Marcella, just to vary her thoughts 


mike’s end. 


159 


even for a few minutes. Thus he informed her at various intervals 
that ‘ ‘ The O’Donovan ” was staying on a visit at Mount Ramshackle ; 
that Miss Julia O’Flaherty had been married at last to Mr. Jones, the 
wedding having taken place from a hotel at Scarborough ; and, a little 
later, that Miss O’Donovan was about to become Mrs. O’Flaherty. 

To Marcella these items of gossip were the merest far-off echoes 
of a w’orld of which she had never known much, and had almost 
forgotten. Old Biddy Malone’s toothache was of infinitely more 
importance to her than the fact that Julia O’Flaherty’s bride-cake 
had, like all the royal bride-cakes, been ordered from Chester. Nev- 
ertheless, she had grown to be thankful for any passing idea that 
made her smile. 

For Mrs. Kilmorey Father Daly had always cheery words about 
Bryan’s travels and return, and a store of little jokes to make the 
poor lady laugh. But he asked her no more for the song of the 
“ Wild Geese,” and the harp stood silent in the corner. 

One evening, after the usual gay ten minutes which he bestowed 
on Bryan’s mother after his arrival, he pushed away the books 
which Marcella had opened under the particular lamp which suited 
his spectacles, and said, 

“ It is no use trying. I can’t work to-night, my dear. My mind’s 
uneasy. A bad fever, a kind of plague, it seems to be, has broken 
out at Athlogue close to Ballydown valley, and the people are dying 
fast. I’m thinking of what we shall do if it comes our way.” 

Athlogue was a district on the estate of the murdered Mr. Ffont. 
The people there had long lived in a wretched condition, and since 
the murder had fallen from bad to worse. The new owner had re- 
fused even to visit the estate, and lived in England, and the agent 
misbehaved himself pretty much as he pleased. The plague that 
had now appeared was the outcome of slow famine and hardship, 
and would probably effect many wholesale evictions, carried out 
without the assistance of the sheriff and police. 

The better condition of the peasantry living under Marcella’s rule 
did not save them from the scourge, which, once started, flies over 
moor and mountain like wildfire, and the fever was soon raging at 
Distresna. 

Marcella’s heart quailed as she saw two distinct and conflicting 
duties confronting her. The doctor, who came from a distance, and 
had a large district to attend to, stated that the only means of arrest- 
ing the ravages of the disease were separation and good nursing; 
and how were these to be effected and procured? The poor-house 
hospitals were full, and the people hated them besides. There were 
no Sisters of Mercy within reach. The peasants were deplorably 
ignorant of the first principles of nursing, and careless of the sim- 
plest precautions as to infection. She herself was the only person 
who could come forward and attempt to bring some sort of order 
into this confusion of suffering and alarm. 

And yet, Bryan! If she were to take the fever and die? Seeing 
that he had only her, had she any right so to desert him, to risk fall- 
ing away from his need? Were all these people who had grown tq 


160 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


be so dear to her, were they, all put together, half as precious to her 
as a single hair upon his head? 

Father Daly had tried to be before her thought with his warning. 

“Remember,” he said, “you are to stay where you are, to stand 
to your post. You are not your own; you are Bryan’s. You can 
give me your advice, and I will carry it out. But we have had trag- 
edy enough in this family. I will not allow you to risk any more.” 

She had heard him with a sensation of relief; but that night her 
conduct appeared to her in a different light. Was she Bryan’s wife, 
and yet a coward? God would stand by her in her daring. Her 
effort, her trust, would win a blessing for both of them. The next 
day she met Father Daly at the bedside of a sufferer who was “down 
in the fever.” 

He saw her courage and faith in her eyes, and did not remonstrate 
with her. A strong impression that she would be safe took posses- 
sion of his mind, and from that moment they put their forces to- 
gether in the work that was at hand. 

She had already learned a good deal about nursing from the vari- 
ous attendants of Mrs. Kilmorey in her illness, and now she easily 
took in the doctor’s directions as to the treatment of this particular 
disease. 

Her first care was to have long wooden sheds erected as a kind of 
temporary hospital, and she spared neither money nor personal at- 
tention to fit them with all that was convenient and comfortable for 
the necessities of the patients. Two or three healthy, strong-hearted 
girls volunteered as hospital nurses under her guidance, and her old 
ally Mike constituted himself her chief attendant and assistant, go- 
ing and coming with her, fetching and carrying for her, and doing 
no small share of the nursing besides. 

For this faithful lad she had grown to feel a special affection, as- 
sociating him as she did with Bryan’s trouble from the very begin- 
ning, and knowing that he had done his utmost for him at the trial. 
She allowed him now to do all that he wished, to think that he ac- 
complished even more than was possible, and to know that she was 
grateful to him for all. 

Soon the aspect of the plague-stricken country was changed. The 
panic subsided ; the suffering were glad to go at once to where 
“Herself” would take care of them; the houses were kept as free 
as possible from infection ; the deaths were fewer than they had 
been, and those who died went their way in peace and full of conso- 
lation. To no people on earth can death be made so sweetly accept- 
able as to the faithful among the Irish poor. 

In the urgency of the need, in the press of the work, Marcella for- 
got her personal fears. The belief that God would protect her for 
the sake of Bryan, who was so good, had strengthened into a con- 
viction that no amount of weariness or anxiety could shake. If 
Heaven was sometimes mysteriously severe, it was also unquestion- 
ably merciful. So large a share of suffering had been laid upon 
and accepted by him and by her already, that this particular danger 
would be sure to pass by and leave them entirely unharmed. Jp- 


mike’s end. 


161 


stead of breaking down under her efforts, she seemed to grow strong- 
er, brighter, more thoroughly alert and alive. She felt a motherly 
love for her recovered patients, and knew besides that the lessons 
they had given her in faith and patience were well worth the price 
she had paid for their lives. 

The hospital was at a distance of two miles from Crane’s Castle, 
and stood on a wide stretch of high ground, not near to any habita- 
tion. In a small shed close by she and her nurses changed their 
clothing on coming to the place and before returning home, so that 
infection might not be carried by their means. Here also she kept 
the medicines and various necessaries given into her charge by the 
doctor. 

On her way to the hospital in the mornings she was accustomed 
to meet Mike, who had either passed the night on guard among the 
sick, or had been busy on the scene of work from daybreak. 

Coming to meet her, to know if she had any messages or commis- 
sions to intrust to him, he often appeared at a point where the road 
was met by a narrower one leading to the mountains; and one morn- 
ing as she passed this bend of the road she looked up the path, while 
the thought just crossed her mind that Mike was not coming this 
morning by that way. 

She felt pleased that her solitary walk had been so far uninter- 
rupted, as of late this hour had been the only one in which she had 
leisure to think her own thoughts freely. At the same moment the 
sound of a shot that came with startling distinctness over the shoul- 
der of a hill was heard by her with a sinking of the heart. That 
particular sound of the discharge of a gun — not a very uncommon 
one in a country frequented by sportsmen — always smote her with 
a shock of indescribable pain. She must evermore associate it with 
the idea of murder, and with all the horror and disaster that a mur- 
der had dragged after it into her life. 

Such a shot, though neither Bryan nor she had heard it, had been 
the signal for the beginning of their irreparable misfortunes. 

Looking up at the blue sky, with high-sailing clouds, and at the 
plume of purple heather stirring upon the brow of the bluff above 
her, she dismissed that thought, but was sorry to feel sure that some 
happy bird had in that moment of her thinking been brought low. 

Arrived at the hospital, she found that Mike had not appeared 
there that morning; and after some hours it was felt that he was se- 
riously missed. Nobody had hitherto thought a great deal about 
his simple services ; but now that they were not to be had, their 
value began to be recognized. 

In the afternoon a general fear was expressed that Mike was him- 
self “down in the fever,” and a messenger was despatched to the 
mountain to bring tidings of him. 

It was still broad daylight when Marcella set out again on her 
evening walk homeward. She was feeling grieved for her faithful 
friend and servant, sure that nothing but illness would have kept 
him from his post, that to-morrow she would find him on a bed in 
II 


162 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


the hospital. He was a frail creature, and the fever would carry 
him off — though not if skill and care could save him Repassiug 
by that crooked point of the cross-roads, she remembered the sound 
of the shot heard there in the morning, and the pang it had given 
her, and again she looked up at the bluff above her head. There 
was the ragged bunch of heather swinging from the verge, only- 
colored a burning crimson now in the glow from the western hori- 
zon. She would get up on that breezy rock before the glory faded. 
What a sweep of valley, mountain, and firmament must be visible 
from such a vantage-ground. She turned up the by-path and as- 
cended the narrow zigzag that climbed the bluff. 

How wild and sweet, how magnificent, and yet how peaceful was 
the world in which she breathed, on which she gazed! The scents 
of wild thyme and honey were in the breeze; a plover cried faintly 
in the distance; a flight of moor-birds winged over the brow of the 
hill she was climbing, and circled in the upper air; the richest Tyrian 
dyes never produced colors so deep or so living as the purples, crim- 
sons, rose-reds, ambers, that lay about her, above and beneath, soft- 
ened, and yet intensified, by the gray of approaching shadows. 

If Bryan could see this but for one moment, one little half-hour. 
She walked a bit across the hill, ascending as she went, fascinated by 
nature’s meanings and mysteries, unwilling to break the spell of the 
enchantment of the hour. She would have ample time to reach 
home before nightfall; and even if not? She was at no time afraid 
to walk the hills and valleys of her little kingdom unattended. 

She stood still and rapt for some minutes, looking upward, down- 
ward, outward, and then she began to move again, while her wide 
wandering gaze wavered gradually to what was near her as she 
stepped. Suddenly, with a sharp cry and pause of her heart’s beat- 
ing, she came to a dead stop, staring at something a few yards away 
right in her path — a man flat on the ground, arms out-stretched, and 
ghastly face to the sky. 

It was Mike, her trusty friend, shot through the heart, dead as the 
stones, still and silent as the lonesome mountains that looked down 
on him! 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

A WARNING. 

There was grief and indignation among the people at the news of 
Mike’s cruel murder, or “ sudden death,” as they called it, speaking- 
under their breath as if they feared the blades of grass at their feet 
could hear them. Marcella, catching their whispers, told herself 
that these people must have lived terribly between two mortal fears 
— dread of the landlord and dread of the secret societies — to have 
learned this cowardice, they who cared so little for hurt or death. 
Mike was followed to his grave by true mourners; but there was no 
loud demonstration on the part of his friends, and nothing was said 


A WARNING. 


163 


about trying to discover the authors of his death. He was put away 
under the sod, and apparently out of mind, with sighs and shudders ; 
but even his own family mentioned him no more. 

Marcella, having questioned some of the people on the subject, 
but without getting any satisfactory answer, asked Father Daly the 
meaning of this unnatural state of things. Was the murderer one 
among themselves? and had friends and neighbors agreed by com- 
mon consent to condone the crime? 

“Hush!” he said, “ it is enough for me to speak loudly when I de- 
nounce the murderer from the altar, but it will be safest for you to be 
silent in the matter. Neither friend nor neighbor could do any good 
by lamenting over poor Mike’s untimely fate. The same hands that 
with one blow struck Mr. Ffont — who, God forgive me for saying 
it, had worked hard to earn his fate — and struck your husband for 
defying the power that moves those hands, have felled this harmless 
lad. Doubtless he was marked from the first moment when he vent- 
ured to warn you of Bryan’s danger, and told off as ripe for death 
after he gave his evidence on the trial. We have had a visitor or 
visitors in the country, it seems, unknown to us. Let me entreat 
you, my dear, to do nothing to provoke their attentions, to be silent 
on dangerous subjects, and to be careful how you go and come.” 

Marcella, appalled at such a view of the case, struggled a while with 
her impulse to cry out, to condemn, to warn ; but remembering her 
helplessness as a woman, and Bryan’s dependence on her, lowered 
her voice, and was careful in her movements, and acknowledged 
herself at last to be a coward. 

“For they would strike a woman,” she said to herself. “Those 
who would harm a poor simple youth like Mike would strike a 
woman. And I cannot deny that I want to live for Bryan. I 
braved the fever for the sake of the saving of many, but I am power- 
less here; and Mike is already gone beyond my help.” 

She did not, however, alter her usual course of conduct, persisted 
in the discharge of her self-imposed duties, and hung out no signals 
of fear. 

Mike had been in his grave a month, and the fever was abating; 
September brought cold, fresh weather, unfavorable to the spread of 
the scourge, and there was hope that it would have quite disappeared 
before winter. 

One night Marcella had sat up later than usual to finish the letter 
that, whatever the labors of the day might be, was unfailingly posted 
to Bryan. She had had much to tell him lately, and as she sat now 
alone with lamp and fire she told him that she felt with relief 
that winter was coming back, and that the sweet airs he could not 
breathe with her, and the brilliant scenes he could not behold with 
her, were going, and would soon be gone ; she felt nearer to him as 
she was now, shut in a room, all her mind concentrated on her 
thought of him ; even the sighing of the night wind — 

What the night wind had to do with her fancies remained untold, 
for suddenly glancing up, she knew not from what cause, she saw 
the figure of a m an coming into the room. She was sitting in the 


164 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


library, a room somewhat removed from the others in the house; 
the table and the fire were between her and the door. Scarcely be- 
lieving the evidence of her senses, she stared at the figure, saw that 
it was totally strange to her, that all the middle part of the face was 
blackened over so that the features could not be recognized, and 
finally that it was advancing towards her. 

She glanced at the clock on the mantle-piece. It was half an hour 
past midnight, and the servants had all been in bed for two hours at 
least. In the midst of the confusion of her sudden alarm she real- 
ized that there would be no use in calling for help even if her voice 
would come. If this meant death, then it must be death; yet if she 
could keep her senses — 

The man had advanced to the table at which she had been sitting, 
and stood at the other side of it leaning towards her, his long, light- 
colored eyes gleaming horribly out of the blackened face. Marcella 
had arisen as he drew near, with an attempt at defiance, and clinched 
her hands on her breast, striving to force back the sob of terror that 
broke from her. With a flash she saw Mike lying with the wound 
through his heart. She was Bryan’s wife, and they were coming to 
punish her for having stood by him. And he would be left alone, 
unless she could use her wits. But with this struggle in her throat, 
how? 

She kept her eyes all the time unflinchingly on his with an in- 
stinctive assurance that if she withdrew them an instant he would 
stretch out the cruel claw-like hands that supported him as he leaned 
across the table towards her, and would strangle her. Where had she 
seen those hands before? Her mind wandered back, as in a sort of 
delirium, to the trial, to the witness-box. No, she would not swoon? 
she would try to speak ; she would not scream— 

And then, after enduring this dreadful madness of gazing and 
battling for sane thought for a full minute, which seemed like years, 
she heard the man begin to speak, not ferociously, but in a quiet, re- 
assuring, reasoning tone of voice. 

“Don’t be so frightened, lady,” he said, “I’m no burglar, and I 
mean you no harm — that is, not unless you force it from me. I have 
come here to talk to you about business. Come, lady, I know you 
have pluck. Drink this glass of water, here quite handy, as if you 
were expecting me, and sit down and attend to what I am going to 
say to you.” 

Marcella drank the water, hoping that it would give her back her 
voice, and almost thankful to him for suggesting it. Then she sat 
down and made a great effort to gather up her wits so as to defend 
Bryan’s property — that is, her own life, and all the comfort and 
service which that otherwise worthless life must mean for him. 

Presently she was amazed to hear her own voice speaking ration- 
ally and quietly in the terrible silence of the room. 

“If you wanted me on business, ” she said, “why did you not 
come in daylight like an honest man? I am here every day to see 
all who come. ” 

“ Thank you, but that would not suit me at all. My business is 


A WAKNING. 


165 


not ordinary business. I have come from them that have their own 
ways of working. Lady, you have got a warning lately. You met 
with something in your path that you did not like.” 

The lowered voice and insinuating tone emphasized the last 
'words. O God! he was hinting at the murder of Mike. Her blood 
curdled as she saw again that white face staring up through the 
heather at the sky. So should she be found one day; and who 
would dare to tell Bryan? 

“Now, lady, we don’t want any more blood in this matter if we 
‘can help it ; but maybe we will not be able to help it if we find people 
stupid and obstinate. I come from them that are bound to work their 
will, not for your sake or my sake, but for the sake of the great cause.” 

“ I am waiting to hear what you want me to do, ’’said Marcella, 
mechanically. 

“Well, lady, your husband, Mr. Bryan Kilmorey, belongs to us. 
That’s one thing I have got to put before you. Once one of us, 
always one of us. He thought to shake us off, and he was punished. 
Death was the punishment due to him ; but an accident came in the 
way, and in a matter of a handful of years— twenty, eighteen, maybe 
fifteen— who knows? — he’ll be out on the world again. And, lady, 
he’ll want something to do. The pretty, genteel world he wanted 
to belong to will have nothing to say to him. Let him return to us, 
and we will rub out old scores. What you’ve got to do now is to 
swear to me, and to give it to me in writing, that you will use your 
influence with him. It’s well known to us that you write to him 
pretty often, and that you’re the kind of a wife that sticks to a man 
like glue — that you will win him over for us, so that when he comes 
out of his prison he will be one of us again.” 

“Never!” said Marcella. 

“Ah, I thought you would say that at first, for you are a plucky 
one — I always said so; but I am going to give you plenty of time to 
think the matter over. It’s a matter of life and death to you ; but 
you won’t mind that so much as some of your sex would do — for 
their own sakes, I mean. But when you come to consider of it, 
you’ll think a good deal about all that you’ll bring upon Bryan Kil- 
morey by refusing. When you are gone, he’ll sit there in his prison 
cell— a hell of a place, I can tell you— a desperate man ; and by the 
time he comes out he’ll have worked himself mad. And so we’ll 
be pretty likely to get him, without any thanks to you. The law 
has condemned him as one of us, and the world believes he belongs 
to us; and he’ll find out he may as well have the game of it, seein’ 
he’s got the name of it. You and him can both be useful to us, but 
he’s the one we want. We can do without you. So now you know 
what I mean, lady. As it is, you’ve been rather in our way for some 
time back. We have a score running up against you since the night 
you hid Kilmorey. At present you stand between us and the people 
here ; you’ve got a lot of work in you, and we could make you very 
useful ; but if you won’t change your hand, and work for us, you’ll 
have to go.” 

“I must go, then.” 


1G6 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“No, you needn’t. I have my orders, and I shall obey them; but 
it’s part of my business to tell you that we would rather not meddle 
with women if we can avoid it. As I said, you are going to get 
time to think abput it. We do nothing without plenty of warning. 
You have ten days from this time to turn it all over in your mind. 
On the tenth day, when night comes, you will put a light in your 
bedroom window, a bright light to burn all night, so that it can be 
seen ; and I will— no, I will not come here again, trust me for that 
— but I will contrive to meet you somewhere, and to get that prom- 
ise in writing from you. And I will have means of knowing, too, 
whether you keep your word—” 

“ And if I make no sign?” 

“Well, I would rather not speak uncivil to a lady; but in case of 
obstinacy you will be likely, sooner or later, to — meet with a bad 
accident.” 

“I suppose this is all you have to say for the present,” said Mar- 
cella, struggling to control the expression of her horror. “If it is, 
I will ask you to leave me for a time.” 

“I’m going,” said the intruder; “ but I must say before I go that 
you are a plucky one, lady. I was afraid I might have frightened 
you to death. And I don’t want to hurt you — not if I can help it. 
I’m only doing my duty and obeying my orders. You’ll learn to 
do the same before long, if you are wise. Good-night.” 

Marcella saw him withdraw from the other side of the table, turn 
and glide away, she did not see where. Her eyes, released from 
gazing at him, grew suddenly dim, and she groped her way to a 
door near her with but one thought, that she would escape to her 
room before the reaction after her fierce effort at control should set 
in and might take away her senses. To wake from a swoon here, 
alone, in the dead of night, with the recollection of this horror star- 
ing her in the face, might overturn her brain. Safe in her bedroom, 
she locked the door, and flung herself on the bed, feeling secure for 
the moment, if not yet capable of thinking. 

Her first clear thought in the matter was that she would write to 
Bryan and ask his advice, his guidance as to her conduct; he would 
know how she ought to deal with these people. Whatever he di- 
rected her to do she would do. The next thought that came to her 
was that she must do no sucli thing, that she would not even hint 
to him of what had happened. His anxiety for her might lead him 
to think of temporizing with the fiends, thus entangling himself, 
through her, inextricably in their toils. By telling him, she could 
only fill him with alarm and cruel agony of mind, causing him to 
fear every moment, throughout the long monotonous moments that 
made up the prisoner’s day and night, for her safety. She would 
take counsel with Father Daly only. She would fight out this bat- 
tle for her husband, and for herself, alone. 

As soon as possible she hastened to the priest and related her ex- 
traordinary story. The old man stood aghast at the dilemma in 
which he saw her placed. He was dazed and horrified. He had no 
expedient to suggest, no advice to offer. 


A WARNING. 


167 


“They mean what they say,” he said, walking about his little par- 
lor, where his breviary lay open on the table, showing where he had 
been interrupted in his reading, ‘ ‘ and they generally do what they 
threaten; not always, perhaps, but generally.” 

“Not always?” asked Marcella, tremblingly. 

“ Sometimes their only object is to frighten; but I am terrified for 
you — terrified, terrified. I can only think of getting you away out 
of this^” 

“Would that do any good?” said Marcella. “It seems to me 
that if they want me they will follow me — anywhere. I have got 
the impression that if I try to escape they will be the more bent on 
having me. I fancy that the only thing that seemed to soften that 
wretch towards me was what he called my ‘pluck.’ If I stand my 
ground I have a chance; if I run, I am lost — ” ,L 

“Yes, you are right; they admire courage. It is the only virtue 
they have any longer a conception of. Oh, my lost sheep, my men 
who ought to have been soldiers!” cried the old man, throwing up 
his trembling hands. “ When will the Lord lift the pall that hangs 
over this unhappy country?” 

Then, recovering himself and returning to the urgent question of 
the moment, he went on: 

“And yet I must think about guarding you. I could smuggle 
you into a convent, where you could live as one of the nuns — ” 

Marcella shook her head. “I feel that it would be no use, ’’she 
said. “The moment I tried to come out again they would meet 
me on the threshold ; that is, if they are in earnest. If they are not, 
why I should only be wasting my time, and neglecting my duties 
here. ” 

“In the mean time, at all events, I will put you under the care of 
the police.” 

“I will not have the police,” said Marcella. “I will not be fol- 
lowed about as if I were an evicting bailiff or an inhuman landlord. 
Father Daly, the more I think about this, the more clearly I see that 
my only chance is quietly to ignore their threats. Even in the hope 
of ultimately persuading me to their ends, of utilizing my ‘ pluck ’ 
for their own purposes, they may let me live a little longer. I will 
not temporize, I will not hold out a straw to them, but I will go my 
own way, and take the chances that are in my favor. If, even after 
five years’ persuasion, I could be induced to yield and take their 
oath, think how useful my money would be to them. They will 
hope, perhaps, to weary me out with fear — ” 

‘ ‘ And, my poor child, are you strong enough to live with such a 
sword over your head?” asked the old man, taking her warm hand in 
his own cold ones, and looking pityingly in her eyes. 

“ I do not know. Who can tell how much he can suffer till he 
tries? Perhaps, if it were a question of myself alone, I should com- 
mit myself to God and say, ‘ Let it be ended quickly, whatever is to 
be the end !’ But — ” 

“Yes, ’’said Father Daly, as the look of almost stern resolve left 
her brows, and her lips quivered — “yes, the whole of it is in that 


168 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


‘ but,’ I know. Then may Heaven assist you, my dear, and inspire 
you in every step you take, for it seems to me I have come to the 
end of my helpfulness!” 

During the ten days that followed that midnight visit Marcella 
went her way exactly as usual, and when the night of the tenth day 
arrived she retired to bed early, locking her door and leaving her 
room in darkness. It surprised her to find that the terror she had 
expected to feel on this night, more than all others, did not, after all, 
assail her. Feeling that she had decided as best she could, and that 
the die was cast, she fell asleep from sheer weariness, the entire bod- 
ily collapse that often follows on a long strain of suspense and ex- 
citement. 

The next day she arose refreshed, wondering at her own fearless- 
ness, cheerfulness, almost gayety of spirit. Now that her course was 
finally taken, she knew by the sense of relief that underlay her good 
spirits that she must have been in danger of turning coward, and of 
ruining Bryan’s after-life by her weakness. Even if she died, and 
she did not feel that she was going to die, she would have done noth- 
ing to compromise him or his future. .Almost before breakfast was 
over Father Daly appeared. 

“I knew you would be off to the hospital as usual,” he said, see- 
ing her hat and gloves on the table, “ and I have come to be your es- 
cort. For the future you must have some one with you wherever 
you go.” 

“Wliat use, what use, Father Daly?” cried Marcella, drawing on 
her gloves. ‘ ‘ Ton are always welcome, but I do not change my 
habits one iota. My mind is made up.” 

Her eyes were sparkling, and a little red spot was on one of her . 
cheeks. She laughed as she tripped down the steps before him. 
Then she turned grave for a moment as she looked back at him and 
saw his anxious face. 

“ I have said my prayers, Father Daly, and what matter about the 
rest? Something is going to take care of me, I know; else how could 
I feel so blithe when there is everything against me?” 

Father Daly answered nothing except by taking her hand and 
placing it on his trembling arm with an air of protection; as he went 
along he found himself almost tottering. He realized for the first 
time that old age had come upon him. It was a fresh, bright Sep- 
tember day, the birds were singing with that spontaneous after-burst 
of song which breaks from them when the heats of summer have 
gone away. The purple coloring of the heather was at its perfection ; 
the shining silver of the sea was subdued by soft gray lines, the 
moors were at their tawniest and loveliest. When they had walked 
about half a mile, a man met them at a turn of the road and appealed 
urgently to the priest to come with him at once up the mountain, 
where a person lay suddenly dying who had something afflicting on 
his mind. 

The priest stood still with a shock of disappointment. Why could 
he not fulfil first the task he had undertaken of conducting Marcel- 
la safely to her destination? He hesitated, and the messenger re- 


A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 


169 


newed his entreaties. It was an urgent case, a desperate case. There 
was not an hour, not a second to be lost. After a minute’s struggle 
and a short prayer, Father Daly’s hesitation was over. His priestly 
duty lay up the mountain road. The angels must take care of Mar- 
cella. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 

As Father Daly turned back when a few perches up the path, and 
saw her waving her hand to him, he remarked within himself that 
he had never seen her look so fair and sweet as on this particular 
morning. She wore a very dark blue dress, many shades darker 
than the heather, with something crimson in her hat, and the old 
man’s thought was that she had improved during the last few 
months, that Bryan had never seen her look so well as this. The 
idea of danger hovering round her had made him notice her more 
closely than usual. She was as dear to him as his own grandchild 
might have been. Nothing but the impossible alternative of allow 
ing a troubled soul to go into eternity unprepared and unshriven 
would have drawn him at that moment from her side. But as he 
turned away and lost sight of her, he felt himself suddenly sharing 
her happy presentiment. “ She is right,” he thought. “ Something 
will undoubtedly take care of her!” 

Marcella went on her way with no abatement of her unusually good 
spirits. The effort to reassure Father Daly had reacted upon her- 
self, and all realization of danger had left her. She walked quickly, 
but not as though she were nervous, or running out of anybody’s 
way. At the next turn of the road she saw a car and horse stand- 
ing, as if waiting for some one, and she noticed as she passed that 
she did not know the driver, who was standing by the roadside while 
the horse munched the grass, idly plucking at the tips of the lance- 
like leaves of the withering flag-lilies. At her approach he averted 
his face and almost turned his back upon her. 

At this point her way left the road and struck out over a piece of 
vividly colored moorland, skirted by black bog on the side where it 
swept across to the mountains. About half a mile along this level 
strip of land she could see the wooden walls of her hospital catching 
the gleam of the sun; but the intervening space between her and 
them was lonely in the extreme. There was not a cabin nor a liv- 
ing thing in sight. So well known was it to Marcella that its lone- 
ness did not strike her. It was simply an interesting bit of her 
daily walk, in which the landscape always took a peculiarly pathetic 
expression. A little farther on there was a wide, dark pool of irreg- 
ular shape, with ragged edges, into which the high-sailing clouds 
kept looking down as they passed, giving an air of mournful anima- 
tion to the solitude. 

Just before coming to this pool, by the edge of which her path 


170 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


was to lead her, she suddenly stood still, fancying she saw a figure 
lurking behind one of the short, dark bushes. Then she walked on 
a few paces, thinking she was, after all, more nervous than she had 
admitted herself to be, since she was seeing mysterious figures in ev- 
ery bush in her path. Another moment, and it was beyond doubt 
that her fancy had played her no trick. A man was crouching on 
the ground behind that clump of thorn, and her eye had caught mo- 
mentary sight of the muzzle of a gun. 

In an instant she remembered the waiting car, the threats of her 
midnight visitor, and concluded that her daring had ruined her. 
With an unuttered prayer in her heart she remained standing quite 
still. She was well within range of the assassin’s gun, if assassin 
this should be, and to turn to fly or run about wildly would only be 
to provoke his anger and hurry his work. A few seconds passed, 
during which she seemed to have lived a century. What was he 
waiting for? Why did he not fire? Her mind was becoming active 
again, recovering from the first shock. She looked and listened in- 
tently, and presently saw the crouching figure stir. It did not try 
to rise, but stirred with a writhing movement; and in an instant it 
flashed upon her that this was not a person who could injure her, 
but one who was in need of her help. Getting to the other side of 
the bush, she saw that the man half hidden there was lying on his 
face in an attitude of mortal pain, and that the gun she had perceived 
was not grasped in his hand, but was resting harmlessly against a 
sturdy stem of a stunted tree in the thicket. 

Making up her mind, from several signs she had learned to know 
well, that this was a case of the fever, she hurried back to the point 
of the road where she had seen a car waiting. The driver was still 
standing where she had left him, but stared at her strangely as she 
approached. She explained quickly that a man was lying ill about 
fifty yards away, and that she hoped he would convey him to the 
hospital. 

‘ ‘ I am engaged, ” he answered , “I am waiting for my fare. I 
cannot leave this spot.” 

“ It will not keep you long,” she pleaded. “You may still be in 
time for your fare. ” 

He stared at her again still more strangely, and gave a look up the 
road by which she had come. Then he stood a few moments irres- 
olute, and finally took his horse by the head and began leading it 
over the rough moorland, where there was no way for a car, only a 
foot-path. 

“The joltin’ will ruin my springs,” he grumbled, but still he fol- 
lowed her. 

When they came to the spot where the man lay, they found him 
turned on his back, with his flushed face thrown upward. He 
seemed to have fallen into a stupor. The driver, on seeing him, 
made a curious exclamation, and appeared so bewildered that Mar- 
cella feared, he had taken fright of the fever, and was going to run 
away. 

“I implore you, for God’s sake,” she said, “ to do this act of char- 


A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 


171 


ity. The man will die if he is neglected longer. He has been ill 
with the fever for many hours. And it is not so contagious as you 
suppose — ” 

Then the man with the car swore a great oath which scorned the 
dread of contagion, and ended in a muttering about this being an 
extraordinary business. Marcella admitted that truth in her heart, 
but she did not betray the fact that she had recognized the face, 
and still more the hands, of the creature for whose life she was plead- 
ing. She saw him lifted and laid across the car, and then got up 
beside him and held him that he might not fall off ; while the driver 
led the horse as before, till they stopped at the door of the hospital 
sheds. 

It was a case of fever of the most virulent type. As soon as the 
patient was in bed and had been attended to for the moment, Mar- 
cella went to look for the driver of the car. He had disappeared, 
and no one had noticed in what direction he had gone. A careful 
messenger was sent to search for the gun, which was probably load- 
ed, and had been forgotten at the bush, but no such thing was any- 
where to be found. 

Nobody had any knowledge of the patient whom “Herself” had 
picked up on the roadside. His features were strange to every one. 
Patients, nurses, friends of the patients — all declared they had never 
beheld him before. Only Marcella recognized him. 

When, a few hours later, Father Daly had come to the hospital 
to look for her, to assure himself that she had not suffered from his 
necessary desertion of her in the morning, he looked at the sick man 
with pitying interest, and remarked that his face was entirely un- 
known to him. What opinion had the doctor given about him? he 
questioned. A poor, gaunt, frail-looking creature, he seemed pretty 
sure to die. What a pity he had not fallen into helpful hands before 
delirium set in! It was sad to think that his friends could not be 
communicated with. 

The doctor’s opinion was a bad one. Marcella walked up and 
down outside the hospital with Father Daly, and talked about this 
new case which powerfully interested her. There was a strained 
look of excitement in her eyes, but Father Daly was not observant 
enough to see it. She had been gay and hopeful in the morning, 
he found her active and strong-hearted now. He noticed no subtle 
change in her, did not guess that anything extraordinary had oc- 
curred in the mean time, that any crisis in her life had arrived 
which she was taxing all her energies to meet. While he talked, she 
was asking herself whether she would dare to tell him of her over- 
whelming discovery. Her heart was beating so fast that she drew 
her breath in long inspirations occasionally; her hands were trem- 
bling; it was only by walking about that she could hold down the 
inclination to laugh, to cry, to weep. No, she dared not tell Father 
Daly. He would bring the police about the place immediately and 
scare away this cowardly soul into the other world before she had 
had her chance to wait and watch for the saving words which her 
hope assured her he could speak for her. She would not tell any 


1 72 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


one yet who was lying in that hospital bed, who it was that Provi- 
denee had delivered into her hands. 

“I am going to nurse this patient myself,” she said. “It is an 
interesting case. The doctor says that nothing but the greatest care 
can save him. We are all good nurses here, but they say I am the 
most — ” 

“ Not at night,” began the priest. 

“Yes, at night, till he is over the worst. Now, Father Daly, 
shall I not be safer here than anywhere else? Nobody would come 
to shoot me here. I know that this is the best place for me at pres- 
ent, so please don’t say that it isn’t.” 

From this resolution Father Daly could not move her. It was 
the best place, the safest place in which she could hide herself now. 
So she argued, and he was obliged to agree with her. 

The days were shortening, the September evenings lengthening. 
When night came on she sent the other nurses to rest ; even the 
man who was always in waiting in case of emergency was dismissed 
to have some sleep within call, and Marcella took her place alone 
as night-watch. Father Daly had undertaken to write her daily 
letter to Bryan for her, in such a way as not to alarm him. She 
would not risk writing to him from beside a fever- bed. Oh, what 
news might she not have to write to him before a month, a week, if 
Heaven would only be on her side ! She wrapped her shawl closel} 1 - 
around her, and tried to still the trembling of her body and soul as 
the vivid realization of this chance, this opportunity that had drifted 
to her feet, and might drift on past her, never to return, seized and 
shook her like the paroxysm of a physical disorder. 

After midnight the patient opened his eyes and began to rave, 
and Marcella fell on her knees and listened to every word, as if life 
or death were to be decided by his delirious outpourings. They 
were only the disjointed utterance of an evil conscience, revealing 
nothing except the confused images and memories of a darkened 
mind. Once she heard the name Kilmorey uttered with an oath, 
but no words of any meaning followed it. Her strained ears were 
rewarded with not a single sentence that could promise her the re- 
morse and confession for which she hoped. Before daybreak she 
was obliged to summon the strong man always in attendance to 
control physically the frenzy of the patient which she was powerless 
to soothe, and fled out on the moor in the breaking dawn to wrestle 
with her impatience, to cry aloud to Heaven for a light to guide her 
in this cruel emergency. 

If he should die in her hands without one sane word! Never had 
her faith and courage been so tried as now. How was she to re- 
main quiet and trustful in God’s providence through all the hours 
that were- to decide whether her new -sprung hope was a beadon 
light or only a wandering fire that would flicker maddeningly and 
go out ? By prayer alone— and if in her prayer she raved, why, 
Heaven would have pity on her, would know all she had wanted to 
• say, and forgive everything that she ought not to have said. The 
sight of sunrise seemed to give her new hope, and she went back 


A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 173 

with outward calm to take up her watch again at the stranger’s 
bedside. 

The people around began to wonder at her exceptional interest in 
this particular case of the sickness. Seeing the surprise in their eyes, 
she tried to account for it, saying that this was a stranger; that no 
one knew his friends; that it would be especially sad were he to die 
without giving some clew to them. The doctor told her that she 
was foolish, was wearing herself out; that he had never counselled 
her acting as a night-nurse. He noticed a change in her strength, 
and would not answer for the consequences if she were now to catch 
the fever, which hitherto she had so wonderfully escaped. 

Father Daly exhorted, commanded, marvelled. It seemed to him 
she had neglected her duties at home, her care of Mrs. Kilmorey, 
her own health, forgotten even Bryan himself, in her extravagant 
solicitude for the life of this ill-looking stranger whom chance had 
dropped into her hands. For all answer to his entreaties she simply 
shook her head and kept her place. There was something working 
within her which he failed to see or touch. He began to think that 
her extraordinary action was due to panic ; that she had got a dread 
of her home, a fear of being attacked there ; that in reality she felt 
safer at this bedside than anywhere else. 

And yet such sudden unreasoning terror coming so quickly upon 
her former almost reckless daring perplexed him. A fear grew 
within him that the long strain upon her was telling terribly at last, 
and that her mind was becoming a little astray. 

This thought startled him cruelly one evening when she put her 
hand on his arm at parting, and looked in his face, and said, 

“ You will not be out of the way when the crisis is near ? I am 
anxious about this man’s confession.” 

“My dear,” he said, gently, “am not I, too, anxious always for 
such poor souls?” 

“Yes, I know, I know; but the doctor thinks he may die without 
being able to speak.” 

.“If he does, it will be sad,” he replied. “We must pray for 
him.” 

“Yes, pray for him, and pray for me,” she said, urgently. “ The 
crisis is expected about an hour after midnight.” 

“Then I will be here.” 

She gave him a piteous look and wrung her hands together, as if 
his promise was powerless to give her comfort. 

“Oh, Father Daly, if I dared to tell you!” 

“Yes, for Heaven’s sake tell me. , What is troubling you?” 

She swayed backward and forward, with her hands pressing each 
other. Her whole body expressed at once her longing to speak and 
her effort to be silent. At last she conquered her agitation and 
looked him steadily in the face. 

“No, I will not tell so long as there is a hope for his life. Now 
go, Father Daly. But you will come back? You will be here?” 

That night after midnight the crisis was past, and the patient lived. 
With the glimmer of a smile on her lips, a pale light on her brows, 


174 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


as if an angel’s wing had passed across her face, she signed to Father 
Daly to depart and leave her alone with her work. Entirely baffled, 
he went home marvelling, while Marcella sat motionless at her post, 
scarcely daring to breathe as the hours went past and the patient lay 
wrapped in a life-giving slumber. 

The scourge had been abating for some time past, and all the other 
cases now in the hospital were convalescent. The present patient had 
been put in a shed by himself, and his nurse was alone as she watched 
through that night by his bed. A small shaded lamp burned in a 
corner, so that the light could not reach him, and Marcella sat in an 
arm-chair wrapped in a large rug, her wide-open eyes fixed on the 
window, beyond which a star was visible between the dividing folds 
of the curtain. She dared not let her thoughts run before the pres- 
ent moment; all her mind w T as concentrated in endurance. When 
morning came she stole away and took measures to insure the con- 
tinuance of quiet, so that the long slumber of the sufferer might not 
be prematurely broken ; then she lay down to rest in a spot close by 
appropriated to her own use. Late in the afternoon he still slept, 
and Marcella, having recovered her strength a little, seated herself, 
refreshed, by his bed as before. 

A red-gold beam from the sunset fell on her as she sat with some 
needle-work in her hands. Her face w r as a little pale, but fair and 
cheerful under her nurse’s cap; her fingers did not tremble as she 
plaited the muslin frills of the apron she was making for one of her 
girls. There w r as a strange sweetness on her downcast eyelids, the 
after-gleam of much prayer, the sign of a faith that can live while 
waiting upon hope. So the patient saw her when he first unclosed 
his eyes and looked around him. Before she chanced to glance up 
and towards him he shut his eyes again, and pretended still to sleep 
while observing her. 

After a while she was conscious that he was awake and watching 
her, but by no sign did she betray that she was aware of being so 
studied. Out of the corners of his narrow eyes he took note of 
the expressions 'flitting across her face, so pure and still under its 
snow-white head-dress, the patient movement of her hands, the dainty 
touch with which she adjusted the niceties of her work with her fine 
finger-tips. He admired her graceful figure, with the square white 
apron smoothed across her breast. Accustomed to be watchful and 
suspicious, he saw nothing in the picture before him to suggest any 
but the most soothing thoughts. At first he did not know her, could 
not imagine where he was; but when she raised her eyes, with their 
wide, peculiar glance, then he recognized her. 

Not until the next morning did he admit that he was conscious of 
what was going on around him ; and in the mean time he watched 
and took note of everything with the wariness of a detective. 

As Marcella came and went, hovering near with all that was need- 
ed for his comfort, bringing him nourishment with her own hands, 
placing a.few late flowers where his eyes could see them, shading the 
light and hushing every sound that could disturb him, she was all the 
tirpe nervously aware that she had been placed upon her trial, that 


A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 


175 


she was undergoing a searching examination, and that presently, not 
by looks only, but by words, difficult perhaps to answer, would she 
be called on to betray herself, and to confess her recognition of the 
identity of this enemy who had been so strangely delivered into her 
hands. And thus to betray herself might frustrate the efforts she 
was making, and had yet to make. 

She controlled herself to meet with a pleasant smile of encourage- 
ment those treacherous eyes that had so sickened her with horror when 
she had first seen them in the witness-box, to place her bounties with- 
out shuddering in those cruel hands that had filled her with such 
fear. She tried to forget for the moment what he was; to be the 
nurse only, the almoner of Heaven’s mercy; to win his gratitude 
by her service; to touch his conscience, if he had one, by her good- 
will. 

On the third day of his slow convalescence he found himself strong 
enough to ask the questions which the cunning of his mind had been 
arranging even before his voice was able to articulate them. 

“You are very good to me,” he said, “and I want to know why? 
I have been wondering how I came to be here.” 

She had just set down the vessel from which he had taken food, 
and was standing with the light on her face so that he could observe 
her. 

“You were found ill and unconscious on the moor. You had 
caught the fever. Of course we brought you here.” 

“ Who found me?” 

“I found you on the way here one morning. I saw that you were 
a stranger overtaken on your journey by the sickness. We have had 
a great deal of the sickness in this part of the country. You have 
had it very badly. ” 

He watched her narrowly all the time she was speaking, and when 
she had finished he drew a breath of relief. 

“ Yes, I am a stranger here,” he said; “ I was walking this part of 
the country for my holiday. I am employed in Dublin as a clerk, 
and I do not often get a holiday. I had got a shooting license, and 
I had my gun. What has become of my gun?” 

‘ * I thought I saw one near you, but I was so busy with you that 
I did not mind it. I tried to save it for you afterwards, but when 
I sent to look for it, nobody could find it. I am afraid it must have 
been stolen. I hope it was not a valuable gun.” 

“ Well, it was worth a good deal to me. Still, I am lucky to have 
got off with my life. I suppose this is the hospital I heard about, put 
up by Mrs. Kilmorey for the fever? It was a capital idea. Only for 
it I’d be dead.” Presently he added, “Are you one of the nurses?” 

“Yes.” 

“You are not the same as the others. You look like a lady.” 

“ I am Mrs. Kilmorey.” 

“Nonsense. You’re joking with me. Catch her putting herself 
in the way of infection! Ladies don’t do that when they can 
help it.” 

He turned his head away impatiently, as if annoyed at being jested 


176 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


with, and Marcella arranged his pillows without another word, and 
went and sat down at a little distance with her work. She was 
afraid to look up, or almost to breathe for some time after, fearful 
of betraying her satisfaction. In this first encounter she knew she 
had got the advantage. He believed that she had not recognized 
him, that he was as yet safe and unsuspected, and might remain 
where he was to get well without fear of detection. Let her now 
encourage his feeling of security. She must not for one moment re- 
lax the effort to hide the terror, disgust, and impatience with which 
the sight of him inspired her, but rather try to subdue and ignore 
those feelings, so as to do the work she had appointed to herself in 
a Christian spirit. The meaning of the words, “Do good to those 
that hate you,” came to her for the first time with clearness and force 
in all its difficulty. She would give him her charity, striving to for- 
get what he was. That was the utmost she could attain to. 

Meanwhile the enemy did not hate her. He felt himself secure for 
the time, quite unknown to and unrecognized by her. After all, why 
should he have been afraid of detection? In her excitement and 
trouble during the trial she had probably not been observant ; be- 
sides, he had then been shaven and close-cropped ; now his hair was 
long, and his beard had grown ; and in this place it was not likely 
that any attempt would be made to interfere with either. On the 
night when he had gone to frighten her in her home, his face had been 
disguised beyond all possibility of identification. It was evident, at 
all events, that she had no distrust of him. With all her pluck, and 
she was a brave one, she could not have concealed some sign of such 
a feeling, had it existed in her mind, neither could she by any possi- 
bility have behaved as she was behaving. The police would have 
been at his bedside, the magistrates would have been watching him; 
but now it seemed that nobody was taking any heed of him but her- 
self. Was it only that she was consoling her sad heart with deeds 
of charity, as the people said of her? He had heard there were 
women in the world of that order who, when their own hearts were 
broken, could only get along by serving, tending, saving others who 
were in pain. 

He w r as not altogether an ignorant man, and only for certain mis- 
fortunes, ill-taken, in his youth, might never have been a criminal; 
yet these thoughts surprised him, coming to him with each long, 
stealthy look at Marcella’s face, as ideas come to a reader off the 
printed page of a book. He began to feel it a distinct pleasure to 
see her sitting near him, a pleasure such as he had never felt since 
the days long ago, in another life, perhaps, when he might have- 
been, when he probably was, good. He was too callous to hate her 
because he had done her harm, neither had he any fear of her be- 
cause of a power she might possibly possess to harm him. He had 
run a. risk of that, but it was over now. He would soon be strong 
enough to rise up at any moment he pleased and disappear from 
this place. There was nothing to stay him but the resistance which 
plight be made by those bountiful womanly hands, no one to oppose 


A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 


177 


him but a creature whom he could in a moment fell with a blow ; 
and it pleased him to think he would rather not injure her, that pos- 
sibly he might never have to do so now. 

No, he would not go away just yet. He would prolong the pleas- 
ure of getting well in such hands. Even for his own security, and 
that of those who employed him, it was desirable that he should not 
move too soon. He asked her to read to him, for the luxury of 
hearing her voice. He would exact every attention that his sick- 
ness entitled him to receive He could never in his life have such 
a chance again, and he would enjoy it now to the utmost. He paid 
little heed to the sense of what she read, only lay seeing dim visions 
of what good men’s lives might be who had women like this to love 
them and care for them. 

Marcella, fulfilling her tasks and seeing him get stronger every 
day, began to grow sick with fear of the hour when he might be 
strong enough to defy her. Her dream of touching his heart and 
conscience began to fade. Could she expect a man like this to turn 
round and denounce himself, to betray the organization of which 
he was the tool, unless life were, in any case, over for him — nothing 
to be looked for but death? Was he really going to get completely 
well, and had the doctor been deceived? Would she have to entrap 
and betray him herself into the hands of justice, after saving and 
serving and cherishing him? She began to suffer from an intoler- 
able fear that she had been wrong from the first in this affair ; that 
she ought to have declared her knowledge of his identity while he 
lay too ill to struggle; ought to have stationed the police at once 
round his sick - bed. In that case he might, on recovering, have 
avenged himself by still withholding the confession that would re- 
deem Bryan; but at least her evidence of his attack upon herself 
would go far to prove that the secret society had really been Kil- 
morey’s enemy, and that her husband was, as he had protested, the 
victim of a plot. If this was the utmost she could hope to obtain 
by his arrest now, how cruel she had been to herself, how needlessly 
she had aggravated her own sufferings in the matter. She began to 
watch him with a new anxiety, dread of his too speedy recovery, 
and to ask herself how soon she ought to call on Father Daly to 
share her secret and her responsibility, to give her his countenance 
and advice. 

Yet the convalescent was certainly gaining less strength than 
might have been expected as a result of the abundant care that had 
been bestowed upon him. He did not appear to have got cold, and 
yet he coughed incessantly. Of this, however, he did not him§elf 
take any heed, w T as quite satisfied with his own progress, felt that he 
would only too soon be able to rise up and depart out of this place, 
in which thoughts had come to him that would have to be banished 
as soon as he had power to turn his back upon the comfortable walls 
which had sheltered him. 

At last one night a sort of scare came over him, a fear that some 
fatal supernatural change had been wrought in him by the gentle- 
ness of this woman, a change ruinous to his own interests and to the 

13 


178 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


interests of the society to which he belonged, and he resolved to 
save himself on the instant by escape. 

He got up in the night, dressed himself, easily took possession of 
all that was his own, and stole noiselessly out of the place. As the 
few sick now remaining in the hospital were all on the way to re- 
covery, the night-watch was not very strict, and no one observed that 
the man was' gone till morning dawned. Then Marcella, coming in 
to look to the needs of her patient, found the bed empty, and the crim- 
inal whom she ought to have secured and given up to justice fled. 

The discovery caused a sensation in the hospital, and Marcella’s 
dismay passed unnoticed in the general surprise. The ingratitude 
of the creature in thus disappearing without saying “thank you” 
to any one disgusted the other patients and angered the nurses. All 
agreed that if he died of the sudden change from the comforts that 
had surrounded him to the freezing hardship of foot-travel through 
the October night, nobody could pity him much. There was every 
reason to suppose that such sudden exposure might be the cause of 
his immediate death. Oh yes, they would go out in search of him 
if “Herself” commanded them tq do so, but the ungrateful creature 
had done nothing to deserve it. Why make such a fuss about his 
good-for-nothing, troublesome life? 

Marcella had little hope that they would be able to recover him 
alive; and as she went out on the wild moor in the chill misty morn- 
ing she felt as if she must have been living in a state of madness dur- 
ing the past month — an unhappy madness that had lost her a chance 
which could certainly never return to her. The hope, the expecta- 
tion with which she had worked had been idle, fantastic, impossible. 
She ought to have denied her enemy her personal ministrations, and 
placed him under the watch of the police. Now he would die in 
some obscure corner. 

While her mind thus writhed in its perplexity, and her heart smote 
her with passionate self-reproach, her thoughts were interrupted by 
the sight of a group of figures approaching slowly out of the dis- 
tance. As they drew nearer, a little new hope sprang up in her. 
Here were the messengers returning, and they were carrying — was 
it merely the body of the missing patient, or was he returning to her 
to die? And yet, what did it matter if, at the last, he should refuse 
to speak? He was brought into the hospital and laid again in his 
bed. The doctor was hastily summoned, and the sufferer was re- 
stored to consciousness. He had broken a blood-vessel, and had 
sw.ooned, but he was not dead. He had days, perhaps weeks, to 
live, thanks to those who had found him where he had fallen upon 
the way-side. 

“ You have been very hard on yourself, my man,” said the doctor, 
when the patient feebly questioned him. “ Why were you so mad 
as to run away and bring on this attack?” 

‘ ‘ I thought I was well enough to go, and that it was time. I had 
given trouble enough. I suppose I am not going to give much 
more. What is the matter with me now?” 


SUNRISE. 


Il9 


“ I am sorry to tell you that you have been in consumption for 
months past. Is it possible that you did not know it? By expos- 
ing yourself as you have done you have hastened the end.” 

The patient reflected for some minutes, and then said, 

“You are sure you are telling me the truth?” 

“Certainly. I should have told you before, only I wanted to 
give you a chance. I am sorry you have taken the matter out of 
my hands. You cannot now live more than a week, I fear— though 
* it is possible — ” 

When the doctor’s ministrations were over, and he was turning to 
go away, the patient stopped him, saying, 

“Look here, doctor, I suppose this is all as it ought to be. If 
you tell me I’m bound to go, why I don’t see much to say against it. 
But there are one or two little matters I would like to put straight. 
Will ydu be good enough to send me a magistrate, and anybody else 
who ought to be present at an important confession? It’s a matter 
for the public, and I mean to have everything fair and square, so 
that the law can pick no holes in it when I’m gone.” 

Marcella, who had been approaching the bed with something 
needed by the doctor, paused, and stood looking steadily at the pa- 
tient. Had he really spoken, or was it a delusion that brought 
sounds to her ears which they had been straining to hear? 

“Ay, lady,” he said, “I’m going to do it for you. You have 
been good to me, that I will say, and for once in my life I’ll do an 
honest turn to somebody. ” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

SUNRISE. 

Mr. O’Flaherty of Mount Ramshackle and a brother magistrate 
were soon at the patient’s bedside, accompanied by a sergeant of po- 
lice and one of his men. The deposition made to them ran some- 
what as follows: 

“ As I am a dying man, going before judgment, I declare that Mr. 
Bryan Kilmorey is innocent of all knowledge of the crime for which 
he is suffering penal servitude, and of which he was convicted chief- 
ly on my testimony. I now acknowledge that testimony to have 
been false, and confess that I, James Barrett, shot with my own hand 
Mr. Gerald Ffrench Ffont on the night of the lOtli of January, 188- 
Bitter experience of landlordism in my family made me a Fenian 
while a lad, and of late years I have been the agent of a very active 
branch of that society. In the year 188- it was resolved to remove 
Mr. Ffont, who was a tyrannical landlord, and at the same time to 
punish Mr. Bryan Kilmorey for deserting from our ranks. We do 
not think it worth while to pursue everv ope who drops away from 
us; but Kilmorey ’s position had made him a precious prize for us, 


180 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


and when he ratted it was resolved to do away with him. We did 
not want to have his strong influence working among the people by 
different means from ours. The ‘Nationalist’ party, which he had 
joined, is a difficulty in our road; and he was tried and condemned 
by our Council. 

“At the same time we were anxious not to have too many mur- 
ders on our hands, and it was resolved to get rid of Kilmorey by 
making him accountable for the shooting of Ffont. The lot to man- 
age the affair fell upon me, as I had been found useful on several 
other occasions. It was I who lured him to the place; I who fired 
the shot that killed Ffont; I who gave the word to the police who 
went in pursuit of Kilmorey. It was suspected that one of our 
band tipped him the hint that*enabled him to hide, and — well, that 
man is dead. 

“ Finding that Kilmorey was reprieved, and that in twenty years 
he would in all probability be at liberty, the society resolved to 
make an effort to work upon him through his wife, and persuade 
him to enlist with us again. It was thought that a desperate man, 
branded as a convict, might be influenced by hatred of the laws that 
had condemned him, and might be induced to give the rest of his 
life to our service. As I had succeeded so well in managing his af- 
fairs before, this second piece of business was intrusted to me. I 
got orders to remove the lad Mike, as a punishment of his opposition 
to us and a warning to others, and then to frighten Kilmorey’s wife 
into agreeing to our plans. The penalty of refusal was to be death. 

“I could make no impression on her; she was too plucky for me; 
and though I would have given her time myself, I had my orders. 
I didn’t want to hurt her, but the thing had to be done. I had been 
hiding up in the mountain for a week, and hadn’t been very com- 
fortable; and w’hen I felt ill for a couple of days before the time 
came to remove her, I thought it was only the hardships. That 
morning I was so bad that I said to one that was with me, and who 
has got away, that I believed I couldn’t do it. He called me a cow- 
ard, and reminded me that to fail of obeying my orders was death 
to myself and no escape for her. I went to the place, though I hard- 
ly knew what I was doing. I remember the sun getting as red as 
blood and as big as a mill-wheel, and the sea rising up and begin- 
ning to move over the land, and then the earth opened and I thought 
there was an earthquake. I remember nothing more about that 
time, but I saw her face all through my illness. It went hard with 
me to take all I’ve taken from her — I mean Mrs. Kilmorey — and 
know all that I knew. I would have got away if I could, for I 
daren’t break my oath and tell on the society; but it’s all right now, 
as I am bound to die. I will tell you more again, perhaps, when 
I’ve got time to think it over, but that will do for the present, I be- 
lieve. All I will add now is, that if most landlords were like Mr. 
and Mrs. Kilmorey, I, and the like of me, would never have been 
what we are. 

“(Signed), James Barrett, 

“ Of the Irish Invincibles, Chief ‘ Informer’ on the Kilmorey trial.” 


SUNRISE. 


181 


Witnesses of this confession were the magistrates, the police, the 
doctor, Father Daly, Marcella, and one or two nurses. 

“Now, ’’said the doctor to the police, “you can watch your man 
here; “ but mind, I tell you, he will never be able to leave this bed. 
Let him die in peace. ” 

“ Lady,” said the dying man, who had scarcely taken his eyes from 
Marcella’s shining face from the moment he began his confession, 
“you’re going to your husband now, and I’ll be dead when you 
come back. I have only one thing to beg from you more— ^that you 
will let me kiss your hand.” 

With a swift movement, Marcella came to his side and gave him 
her hand. “May God bless you,” she said, “and forgive you, as I 
forgive you, for myself and him.” 

Then she turned slowly and walked towards the door, and passed 
out, stunned and blind, scarcely seeing where she was going till the 
others overtook her, and Father Daly caught her hand and led her. 
Mr. O'Flaherty took off his hat and congratulated her warmly, and 
assured her that Mrs. O’Flaherty would do herself the pleasure of 
calling at Crane’s Castle to - morrow. The other magistrate mur- 
mured something to the effect that the whole county would do its 
best to make amends. Marcella bowed mechanically, but did not 
hear them, and Father Daly signed to them to let her alone, and go. 
When they were gone, she began to tremble violently, and stood 
still, and said, 

“ Oh, Father Daly, is it a dream? I have dreamed it so often. Is 
it only a dream? Don’t tell me it is a dream, and that I have got to 
awake.” 

He stroked her shoulder, her hand, gently. 

“No, dear, no dream, no dream; only God’s love and God’s mer- 
cy. We have trusted in that, and that is no dream. Now, my dear, 
courage, courage! Sorrow could not crush you, neither must joy. 
Remember Bryan — ” 

At the sound of his name a low cry broke from her, in which 
rapture and anguish were mixed, as if the new joy in her heart 
could not believe it had got that strong sanctuary all to itself by 
right, and was still constrained by the struggle of departing pain. 
And with that first lifting up of her voice the tears came, and she 
wept a torrent. 

“Let me cry; it will be over in a moment.” 

“ Cry away, my dear; it will wash out the last of the misery.” 

Half an hour later they were in Mrs. Kilmorey’s room. 

“Mother,” said Marcella, walking up to the invalid, “our Bryan 
is coming home at once, do you know ? He is coming home at 
once. Father Daly and I are going to meet him now.” 

A sort of white radiance illumined her face, though her manner 
was very quiet. Only for that marvellous light in her eyes and the 
curious thrill in her tones, one could not have guessed that anything 
extraordinary had happened. 

But the change in her acted at once on the invalid, who looked 
up with a sudden glance of awakened intelligence. 


182 


MARCELLA GRACE. 


“Coming?” she said; “coming? Ah yes, now I believe you, 
because you look like it. Many a time you said it, but your eyes 
told me at the same time it was not true. Is he coming to-night? 
Oh, why are we not all at Inisheen?” 

The doctor, who had followed them, was listening to her. 

“I believe it will be just as I fancied it might if he could come,” 
he said to Father Daly. “ His arrival will probably work a sudden 
cure.” 

Within an hour Marcella was ready to start on her journey to 
England. “We can be there as soon as a letter,” she said, “and 
perhaps they would not give him a telegram. Let me go at once.” 

Father Daly was eager to accompany her, but reminded her that 
there might yet be a trial in store for her patience — a small trial, 
easily borne, after all that had come and gone. 

“ The law moves slowly,” he said, “and doubtless many formali- 
ties will be necessary before the order for release can be forwarded 
to the prison.” 

“Then we must whisper him the news through the key-hole,” 
said Marcella, with a sudden bright laugh, the novelty of which 
startled the listeners. 

After all, there was a period of waiting outside the prison gates 
before even a whisper of the news was conveyed to the prisoner; 
but when the order for release came, Marcella was permitted to be 
the bearer of the happy tidings. 

Kilmorey was reading in his cell, or trying to read, for his mind 
was disturbed by a haunting fear that all was not well at Distresna. 
He knew that the fever still lingered about the country, and that 
his wife was exposed to it; and he had been informed that there 
were letters from Ireland awaiting him, which had been withheld, 
and could not yet be delivered. He was not quite able to connect 
these two facts in his uneasy speculation, not seeing why the au- 
thorities should interfere to retard bad news from home, if such 
were in store for him; yet the interruption in his correspondence 
seemed ominous, and his imagination had free room to work in his 
solitude and suspense. He laid down his book and tried once again 
to reason himself out of his forebodings, when the sound of the key 
in his cell door concentrated his attention on itself as an occurrence 
quite out of rule at that hour of the morning. The next moment 
he had sprung to his feet with an exclamation of surprise and glad- 
ness, for Marcella was within a yard of him. 

“My love, how have you come here? What extraordinary favor 
is this?” 

She was looking so bright and bonny, her eyes shining, her lips 
quivering with joy, that she seemed to have stepped straight out of 
the old happy time before the trouble came. What cause had she 
now for such delight in merely an unexpected opportunity of seeing 
him? In proportion to his rapture would be the depth of her sor- 
row at having to leave him again when the hour of departure should 
strike. This thought passed through his mind as he held her in his 
arms; and then across it flashed another with growing brilliance — 


SUNRISE. 


183 


a conviction that there was some more than ordinary cause for the 
happiness that irradiated her whole face and figure, that seemed to 
throb even in her very hands, and in the movement of her feet. 

“What is it, Marcella? You have something to tell me. Tell it 
to me.” 

She tried to speak, and failed. Now that the moment was come, 
her voice was lost, and she stood dumb. She looked at him implor- 
ingly, and with a supreme effort brought forth at last the words 
which she had repeated to herself so often that the whole universe 
seemed to echo with them. 

“ Do you not know it?” she whispered. “ Can you not guess it? 
You are free!” 

The affair got into the papers a while, several paragraphs appeared 
drawing attention to it, one or two journals had even a leading ar- 
ticle on the subject, while a controversy sprang up for a few days 
between anonymous letter-writers as to whether the testimony of 
informers was or was not a safe kind of evidence by which to obtain 
conviction on an Irish trial. The nine days’ wonder came to an 
end, however, even before the expiration of the proverbial term. 
A few people talked of compensation for Mr. Kilmorey, who, when 
consulted, made the request that any compensation of which he 
might be thought deserving should be held over in trust for the next 
victim of criminal information. The subject was an unpleasant one 
for those who had been over -sure of the released convict’s guilt, 
and there were a good many people who were ready to quote ‘ ‘ no 
smoke without fire,” and to grumble that a man who had once been 
in prison for murder could never be quite on a level with a man 
who had not. 

Kilmorey and his wife had meanwhile returned to Ireland, re- 
ceived the delighted congratulations and welcomes of their people, 
and enjoyed the consolation of seeing the mother cured by the re- 
appearance of her son, in accordance with the doctor’s expectation. 
Italy is at present the scene of their hard won and scarcely hoped 
for happiness, yet they are far from entertaining the idea of becom- 
ing absentees; for Father Daly is already making preparations for 
their return to their home. 


THE END. 



BEN-IIUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST 


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AT LA 


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ATLANTIS 


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